Pollution In China:

Something that has always struck me as unusual here in China is the pollution. Air pollution is horrible (seriously, my snot is black, and we have to wipe the kitchen counters down daily to get rid of all the carbon in the air that has settled), but the ground has almost zero litter in the city. This is true of all the cities I've been to. I'm sure this isn't true in the small villages, or the outskirts of the cities (which quickly turn into a ghetto like environment), but to have 4 million people in Wuxi and no litter boggles my mind.

Part of the reason, as far as I can see, is because of the sheer numbers of the Chinese. Since labour is so freely available, there are people in blue coveralls picking up trash and sweeping the streets constantly. Even more effective than this are what we call the junkers. The junkers are essentially people who make a living by grabbing all the trash they can and recycling as much of it as possible. Apparently, it's quite profitable, so two interesting things occur because of this:

1) You see filthy people walking around with giant bags of crushed plastic with them (bags bigger than themselves).
2) People get excited to get your trash.

This second one is interesting. I won't even put large plastic stuff in bags anymore, I lay them in front of the dumpster, because people will run up to it all excited. They seriously yell and run for it. Fortunately, the junkers tend to work in groups, and seem to have territories, so I don't think I'll see anyone fighting someone else for my trash.

Even funnier is when I put beer bottles down by the dumpster. Now, I know there is a deposit on the bottles, but it's already so cheap (3 yuan == 44 cents CAD for a 700 mL bottle) that I honestly don't care. Even further, I bet the deposit is about one jiao (worth 0.1 yuan - the Chinese dime) and jiao are so worthless and hard to get rid of that you will see them discarded on tables or on the floor, and no one will bother to waste the time and effort to bend over in order to get the jiao. We even joke that beggars wouldn't bother to pick them up. Anyway, even non-junkers will get excited and run for the bottle, because the convenience store I bought the bottle from, and could get the deposit from is literally about 15 steps away from the dumpster. They need the money more than I do, so I just leave it and occasionally get some entertainment when someone gets excited as I walk away.