Posted on 05/24/2003 3:31:11 PM PDT by Dog Gone
BEIJING - The Chinese government is going to turn the heat on bad habits like spitting and children urinating on the streets as it steps up the fight against Sars.
Public health experts say poor public hygiene is due more to such habits than bad sanitation systems.
Chinese state media highlighted some of these unhygienic practices recently.
A check by the Beijing Youth Daily, for example, found that people seemed to spit anywhere and everywhere.
The clearing of the throat occurs most often outside supermarkets, in designated smoking areas of office buildings, in dimly lit pedestrian tunnels, and in wide-open squares and plazas.
It takes place under trees on commercial streets, on sewer manholes, in or near rubbish bins in subway and railway stations, at bus-stops, and while driving.
Dr Chong Lianjin, president of the Beijing Anyuan Hospital, believes spitting is one of a number of 'bad holdovers of Chinese traditional culture'.
According to him, folk wisdom has it that coughing out phlegm, burping, and breaking wind are good for health. And in enclaves of migrants from the countryside, children urinating on the streets are a common sight.
But the sanitation system is far from satisfactory either. For many residents in the Baijiazhuang area of Beijing's Chaoyang district, life literally stank earlier this month when its sewage system failed to work.
After sewers became choked and public toilets could not be cleaned out, the stench of human waste filled the air in the neighbourhood. Residents dared not use water from a well near the cesspool for fear that waste water had seeped into it.
On top of this, public toilets became a makeshift garbage dump since late April when most migrant sanitation workers fled during the initial Sars panic and there was no one to clean these places.
In high-rise apartments, rubbish disposal ducts sometimes get choked because of the sheer amount of daily refuse and bulky items thrown into them, including old furniture.
The situation worsened after city hall ordered the ducts to be sealed off for fear of spreading Sars through virus-tainted refuse.
While residents in such buildings are expected to abide by official orders and carry the garbage outside to ground-floor bins for disposal, many simply dump them outside the lifts on each floor for cleaning workers to pick up.
Meanwhile, sections of the canal bringing water from Miyun Reservoir - the reservoir that supplies much of Beijing's drinking water - are littered with garbage.
And more than 15 truckloads of garbage are fished out each day from the Tonghui River that cuts through central Beijing.
Sanitation is particularly bad at the neighbourhood markets - equivalent to Singapore's wet markets - where live chickens, snakes, rabbits and other animals are slaughtered on the spot.
While there has been no indication when the authorities will spend to improve facilities, they have at least acted on controlling unhygienic habits. Major cities across China have resorted to hefty fines to keep people in check. Since May 1, more than 500 people in Beijing have been fined 50-200 yuan (S$10 to $42) for spitting.
The fines have had a noticeable effect on behaviour, according to Mr Guo Yong, who enforces city ordinances against spitting and other infractions.
'Spitting is definitely on the decline. We've done a lot of enforcement work and there has been much media attention. With Sars, people have become very self conscious about spitting,' he told The Sunday Times.
If only the French were so brave.
Darn, I knew someone would beat to that one.
They are still a century away from criminalizing Oreos.
Now, I would like file a complaint concerning the conditions I discovered in outhouse in the Gobi. There should be hard limits on the height steaming pile of dung. 20 ft is too high.
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