Which Asian nationalities stress cleanliness the most?

[Yongsta]

Singapore has the highest per capita of millionaires in the world, not much reason to leave there. They're probably the most clean. South Korea & Japan are really clean, China not so much but they're improving.

 

[skim milk]

Japan, sing, and korea

 

[StrangerGuy]

Singapore is only clean because foreign cleaners are clearing up litter blatantly left behind by other foreign workers. Empty fields are always full of empty beer cans and bottles where they decide to get drunk.

If it was up to me I would fine their ass back to where they belong to send a clear message about littering, but too bad the govt here is busy sucking cock to the foreign embassies.

 

[zinfamous]

Korea, because they have the best dry cleaners, no?

 

[Imp]

Upbringing... I had one Indian friend who was as batshit crazy about cleanliness as me. I know one Chinese dude who has no concept of clean even when clean means not slathering ink from a broken pen everywhere.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Everyone knows that white people are the cleanest race.

 

[bononos]

North Koreans

 

[mmntech]

I'm always been quite impressed by how clean Japan is. It's definitely culturally ingrained. Imagine being the first to encounter Europeans back in the early modern period. Back when we white folk bathed once every few months if that. Even at the time, the Japanese stressed bathing as a daily ritual.

An interesting tidbit is that classical and medieval Europeans also bathed often. Most towns and cities had a communal bath house. Keeping clean was a major part of social life at the time. It only went out of style in the early modern era, when officials began to suspect that bathing spread disease. Plato probably smelled better than Machiavelli.

Anyway, with the Chinese, I tend to find a north/south divide on how clean they are. Southerners taking it less seriously. Your typical "dirty" Chinatown is mainly populated by Cantonese speakers. A lot of the new diseases from that country also seem to originate in the southern provinces. China also still has a large rural peasantry. Many of who come to the city looking for work, carrying illness spread by animals. Things have improved drastically in the major cities but the PRC needs to focus on rural sanitation and modernization. China's sanitation systems are still in rough shape. Such so that the PRC really goes out of their way to pressure citizens not to talk about how bad the toilets are. It's a major embarrassment for the communists.

Then there's India. This is a country where almost two thirds of their population has no access to closed toilets. That's not just modern flush toilets, but traditional outhouses and latrines as well. So they practise open deification, which means going out in to the middle of your field and laying a fudge pie right on the ground. Imagine every person in the United States having to do this, then double it. This results in disease, poisoning of the water supply, and even contributes to the rape epidemic. Women who go out in the fields to do their business are often attacked. More people have access to mobile phones than they do the john. There's also issues like disposing bodies in the Ganges, where people bathe. As overpopulation trends ramp up, these problems will become amplified.

 

[Anonemous]

Then there's India. This is a country where almost two thirds of their population has no access to closed toilets. That's not just modern flush toilets, but traditional outhouses and latrines as well. So they practise open deification, which means going out in to the middle of your field and laying a fudge pie right on the ground. Imagine every person in the United States having to do this, then quadruple it. This results in disease, poisoning of the water supply, and even contributes to the rape epidemic. Women who go out in the fields to do their business are often attacked. More people have access to mobile phones than they do the john. There's also issues like disposing bodies in the Ganges, where people bathe. As overpopulation trends ramp up, these problems will become amplified.

FTFY, but yea India ranks at the bottom for cleanliness of countries in Asia.

 

[raildogg]

So we have armchair judges sitting thousands of miles away and generalizing about entire nations and peoples.

 

[evident]

So we have armchair judges sitting thousands of miles away and generalizing about entire nations and peoples.

everything said here is pretty much true. imagine going to a beautiful tropical island with beautiful beaches, idyllic palm trees and dirt roads with a phenomenal sunset. and then as soon as you step off the resort property there's plastic bags, bottles floating in the ocean, styrofoam boxes, milk cartons washed ashore so much that you can't even walk down the nice stretch of beach.

welcome to phu quoc, vietnam!

It's a function of how wealthy a country is. the last thing a vietnamese person selling fruits on the street for 10 cents is going to think about is keeping their country clean.

 

[Mai72]

It's definitely not South Korea. I have been living here for almost two years now and I've seen people throw their trash on the street. They treat the world as if it is an ashtray. Old men have a habit of spitting loogers on the sidewalk. It's digesting.

My girlfriend is from Thailand and she takes 2 showers a day. I think Thailand is decent but it's definitely not the cleanest place you could visit.

 

[gorcorps]

I'm always been quite impressed by how clean Japan is. It's definitely culturally ingrained. Imagine being the first to encounter Europeans back in the early modern period. Back when we white folk bathed once every few months if that. Even at the time, the Japanese stressed bathing as a daily ritual.

...

I found it odd that on average most of them don't extend the same thought process to dental hygiene. Everything seemed very clean, and everybody dressed pretty well, but so many people had messed up teeth.

 

[Svnla]

everything said here is pretty much true. imagine going to a beautiful tropical island with beautiful beaches, idyllic palm trees and dirt roads with a phenomenal sunset. and then as soon as you step off the resort property there's plastic bags, bottles floating in the ocean, styrofoam boxes, milk cartons washed ashore so much that you can't even walk down the nice stretch of beach.

welcome to phu quoc, vietnam!

It's a function of how wealthy a country is. the last thing a vietnamese person selling fruits on the street for 10 cents is going to think about is keeping their country clean.

I would not blame just the poor. I was in VN a few times and the young and new rich folks were just as bad, if not worse than the poor, about littering. So sad that they did not care about their own environment.

 

[NetWareHead]

If Chinatown NYC is anything like what China is like then I will never go there. I was most repulsed by the disgusting Chinese custom of spitting and hocking in public. Everyone seemed to do it, even women would hock loogs onto the sides of buildings and on the streets/sidewalks.

 

[evident]

If Chinatown NYC is anything like what China is like then I will never go there. I was most repulsed by the disgusting Chinese custom of spitting and hocking in public. Everyone seemed to do it, even women would hock logs onto the sides of buildings and on the streets/sidewalks.

i was pretty shocked when i was in south korea and saw people do this all over the place. in general the roads and stuff are clean but i saw people on the streets doing this and was pretty grossed out too.

 

[Broheim]

An interesting tidbit is that classical and medieval Europeans also bathed often. Most towns and cities had a communal bath house. Keeping clean was a major part of social life at the time. It only went out of style in the early modern era, when officials began to suspect that bathing spread disease. Plato probably smelled better than Machiavelli.

the danish word for saturday is lørdag, it comes from the old norse word laugardagr which literally means bathing day.


oh and for all the people saying Singapore, the streets maybe clean but the air quality is shit. 3 hour PSI was 321 today, everything over 200 is unhealthy, everything over 300 is downright dangerous. people are actually leaving the country because they can't breathe...

 

[Svnla]

the danish word for saturday is lørdag, it comes from the old norse word laugardagr which literally means bathing day.


oh and for all the people saying Singapore, the streets maybe clean but the air quality is shit. 3 hour PSI was 321 today, everything over 200 is unhealthy, everything over 300 is downright dangerous. people are actually leaving the country because they can't breathe...

Sometimes the source of the problem is from the other country = http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/southeastasia-haze-idUSL3N0EV2XN20130619

 

[FeuerFrei]

It's definitely not South Korea. I have been living here for almost two years now and I've seen people throw their trash on the street. They treat the world as if it is an ashtray. Old men have a habit of spitting loogers on the sidewalk. It's digesting.

My girlfriend is from Thailand and she takes 2 showers a day. I think Thailand is decent but it's definitely not the cleanest place you could visit.

lol @ "digesting"

Yeah, in Korea they pass out flyers by throwing them on the ground and hoping people stop to pick it up. Just let the wind distribute them.

 

[Mai72]

lol @ "digesting"

Yeah, in Korea they pass out flyers by throwing them on the ground and hoping people stop to pick it up. Just let the wind distribute them.

Opps... =)

Ah, I forgot about the flyers. I remember when I first arrived in Korea. I went to a night club and flyers just littered the ground. Hundreds and hundreds of flyers. Supposedly, the majority of those flyers are for sexual services. 😱

When I was in Thailand I noticed people starting brush fires next to the highways. I was in a car and I noticed these fires going up all over the place. D:

 

[chubbyfatazn]

If Chinatown NYC is anything like what China is like then I will never go there. I was most repulsed by the disgusting Chinese custom of spitting and hocking in public. Everyone seemed to do it, even women would hock loogs onto the sides of buildings and on the streets/sidewalks.

I hated China when I went there. Honestly the only places I would ever set foot again in China are Hong Kong and Macau.

Supposedly they got a lot better about it after the Olympics, and I actually didn't see any of the loogie-hocking when I was there. But I don't even care about that, it's the fact that there are too many fucking people and the general mentality is every man for himself. I get that, but if you're used to lining up for shit you WILL get pissed off.

I was at the Expo in 2010, and I saw a grandma using a child (like 7) to get her way through a crowd. Different cultural standards, but I would go crazy living there.

There's also the issue of air quality... when you look up at a 10-story building and can't see past the 6th or 7th floor, you know the city is fucking dirty.