China, Spitting and Global Tourism

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who introduced anti-spitting rules in the 1980s, himself was known to keep a spittoon by his side, even during high-level diplomatic meetings. Note the white spittoon placed near Deng's legs.

Living in Beijing a long time, you learn to anticipate a spitter. 

The crackling crescendo may begin as he nears, leaving you wondering — is it a territorial thing? 

Then the finale: a terrific “ptchoo!” and an opalescent glob whirling like a tiny Frisbee into the gutter or onto the pavement near your feet. 

Or your eye, as happened to my companion standing downwind from a spitter at an open train window, in the western region of Xinjiang.
Wait! I hear you say. 

Why is she writing about public spitting? 

Isn’t it disrespectful, even anti-Chinese, to bring up this national habit, which was once also common in the West? 

Ireland had its “spit and sawdust pubs.” 

In North America there are sporadic reports of people fined for it.
“It’s certainly an issue,” Ross Coomber, a sociology professor at Plymouth University in Britain, who has studied spitting in six Asian countries, said by telephone. 

“It’s an international relations issue and I think it’s one that’s worth thinking about, as opposed to merely reacting to.”
That’s because spitting is a major reason Chinese tourists can feel unwelcome abroad, commentators say. And more are traveling: Chinese will make about 100 million trips next year, up from 82 million last year, and over 90 million this year, Shao Qiwei, the head of China’s National Tourism Administration, said in Chicago last week.
“In recent years the world has more and more opportunities to know China,” Sun Yingchun, a professor at the Communication University of China, wrote in Huanqiu magazine. 

“But discrimination and prejudice against Chinese people abroad hasn’t diminished,” he wrote. 

“Even though Chinese people bring tourist business with them they are also castigated by foreigners. Some foreigners don’t feel kindly toward Chinese tourists because they are ill-mannered.” 

He singled out spitting, loudness, line-cutting and littering.
No one agonizes about it more than some Chinese. 

Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary leader and first president of the Chinese republic said in a 1924 speech, “Spitting, farting, growing a long fingernail’’ to pick one’s nose, ‘‘not brushing teeth,’’ in these things ‘‘all Chinese people are unrestrained.”
“So even though we have great knowledge in self-cultivation, managing our families, ruling our country and establishing peace under heaven,” Sun said, “when foreigners see these they think us very barbaric.”
In the West, “disgusting” is the word most used to describe spitting, said Mr. Coomber. 

For generations, public health campaigns taught Westerners that spitting spread diseases like tuberculosis. That bred repugnance. 

“If you did it in public you were actually doing something that could harm others,” he said.
Yet after studying the public health literature, Mr. Coomber believes the medical risks are overstated.
“I’m coming at it from a very particular angle, and that is that many of the public health messages that are attached to spitting, particularly the spread of diseases, the evidence for that is virtually nonexistent,” he said. “Then it becomes about manners, and that isn’t objective. They’re about fashion and politics and the ability of elites to impose on another part of the population.”
Here are some of his on-the-ground observations: “In India, a lot of it was the dribbling-out kind of spitting,” often from chewing betel quid, “whereas in China it’s a lot more visible and audible. In India there was less bringing up from the back of the throat.”
“Mostly in South Korea it was men smoking,” he said. 

“They smoke very urgently. In Seoul, I saw a smoker finish a cigarette in 90 seconds, and also spit six times into an ashtray.”
Ideally, people would practice “socially responsible spitting,” Mr. Coomber said. 

That means into a gutter and not someone’s path, or eye.
“For India and China, I feel that a lot of elites are looking elsewhere to get a gauge on what civilization is,” he said, creating pressure to change habits. 

“My personal opinion is that spitting is so embedded in these cultures that I don’t see why they have to modify their behavior.”
Sun Yat-sen might not have agreed.