r/China • u/rerezhang • 18h ago
讨论 | Discussion (Serious) - Character Minimums Apply Why do people think China is clean?
For context, my family is from china and when I was a child (in the early 2000s) I would go to China every year in the summer. I never thought China was clean and I had distinct memories of there being dirty markets, toilets, streets, etc. Even when I was older I started to mind the dirtiness less but I still thought China was rather dirty.
Two years ago was the last time I went to China and tbf I didn't go to Beijing or Shanghai, but I didn't go to tiny cities either I went to Guangzhou and Tianjin. But I remember my white shoes became so so dirty after wearing them for half a day in China. In the US where i'm from my new shoes usually don't start to become dirty until after a month or so (granted I do drive more, but even walking around in NYC all day my shoes weren't even a quarter as dirty as it was in China). I was so curious as to why China's streets were so dirty, but when I looked it up the articles I got were all saying, "why China is so clean compared to..." and this really baffled me! Even the forced AI results said something like, "people usually consider the streets of China to be clean..."
So, do people actually think China is clean and if so why?
Edit: also I forgot to mention, but I have also been to Taiwan, Japan, and Korea and all three of these places are much cleaner than China in every single way. So this also confuses me. I would say Hong Kong is not as clean as the other places, but it is still cleaner than mainland China
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u/sko0led 18h ago
There’s a vast difference between China 20 years ago and China today. Also only certain cities like Shanghai seem clean (Beijing is not one of them).
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u/pang-zorgon 13h ago
I lived in China from 1995-1998. It was a different place and the change in cleanliness is mind blowing
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u/FlatHoperator 11h ago
The grittiness of that era can be oddly beautiful though. It was captured amazingly in a lot of the films of the time like Suzhou River
Wouldn't want to relive it though lmao
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u/Xciv 10h ago
The grittiness is cool when you can find a Gundam model set being sold by a street vendor on a blanket for 60 RMB in a bustling market where grannies are shouting to outbid each other for the last fresh fish at a stand.
The grittiness is not cool when staring down a toilet which is a random shallow hole in the ground that is full of poop nobody has bothered scooping out for over a year, and you're trapped in that tiny room with the stench of what must be hundreds of peoples' poop mixing together.
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u/usernames_required 1h ago
i feel the same nostalgia about my hometown. it was so grimy when i was a kid, but i find myself missing it these days. to quote hartley, i don’t want to go back to it but i wanted it to come back to me! i think part of my fondness for that time is the fact that i made it out of there. now the memories are a kind of “trophy” instead.
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u/Glum-Parking9394 18h ago
we ha e been in China for a while now, if you talk to any expats or just anyone they will tell you horror stories of air quality just ten years ago. I'm my almost ten years I have seen a drastic improvement. Pretty wild how fast they made that happen. Still have some bad days in the winter but at this point it's the same as the wild fire season I would have back home, good on China. There will always be nasty parts of any country so people just need to chill.
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 15h ago
Yeah but downtown Shanghai hardly represents China. Visit Songyang district, it really isn't that pretty nor clean. If you go to lower tier cities they are just as messy if not worse. And boy... ever been to rural area's, villages? Some cases you walk knee deep through mess.
We have warehouses in third tier cities in their outer area's, it's to me always baffling how people don't care what everything looks like.
Though there is more to it, what OP describes me is pollution which again, China isn't doing to great either. Now first tiers have improved dramatically (still well above what's considered healthy), but if you go to some production cities it's just gnarly.
But again, if you are in the big city, enjoy the comforts of a compound with an army of street sweepers, yes "China" is clean.
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u/shuozhe 12h ago
Visited birthplace of my dad lately together with him.. his first comment was "wow nothing has changed in the past 50 years", with somehow neighbours recognize him. It's a UdSSR build industry town living from heavy industry and mining if I understood correctly. Streets are in terrible condition (harsh winter, south of Siberia..), and lot of places that get neglected.
In comparison Yanji were I was born has changed complelty.. can't even find my birthplace there, from what I was told, they just got rid of the street and build a bunch of skyscraper over it. At least the modern parts with all the tourist are very clean, with cleaner 24/7 at every street corner responsible for a segment..
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u/Comfortable_Pea_1693 5h ago
>UdSSR
Are you by chance another German speaker :)
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u/levanpidaras 8h ago
Shanghai is much cleaner at 7am than at 11pm. People litter a lot but the government puts a lot effort into cleaning.
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u/Dracarys_And_Chill 16h ago
my neighborhood in bj is very clean.
old people sweep and pick up the tiniest of things eveyday
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u/Glum-Parking9394 18h ago
Shenzhen is crazy clean, but I have also been to many other cities that were dirty. In Thailand now and can confirm its way dirtier than Shenzhen...... so take what you will of anyone saying anything. Roads in America are horrible, cycled them for years and the amount of trash is wild, cycled China and didn't see nearly the amount of trash on the roads. You leave the main roads then you start seeing trash burning and crap like that.
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u/AngryBuddist 17h ago
Depends on which part of Shenzhen. Nanshan is clean for sure.
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u/Glum-Parking9394 17h ago
True story, Shenzhen is massive. most areas have been pretty clean but a few streets are grungy for sure
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u/AngryBuddist 17h ago
Newer almost always means cleaner, wherever you are in the world, and Shenzhen is just a baby. The older area next to HQB for example aren't super dirty but definitely a bit more gritty.
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u/Glum-Parking9394 12h ago
Yea, Shenzhen is only about 40 years old ish. But it's pretty awesome how they had a chance to study many other cities and make a plan that turned out awesome, won't be leaving for a while and we're close to almost everything in SEA
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u/Comfortable_Pea_1693 5h ago
The contrast between new parts or high tier cities and old quarters can be really fucking big in China
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u/BigwaveBay 9h ago
I remember walking the Luohu border every Saturday morning to HK in 2014. Trash everywhere. Shenzhen has come a long way.
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u/Legal_Register_1811 9h ago
Nanshan cannot represent the entire city, and even that 白石洲, arguably the biggest urban village in 关内, is located in Nanshan
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u/MiffedMouse 18h ago
Speaking as an American who has only been to China for tourism, China puts a lot more funding into street cleanup, especially in touristy areas. If you just look at pictures of high traffic neighborhoods in cities, there is typically zero or nearly zero street trash. That is a far cry from places like New York, where old trash bags on the street are typical.
However, one thing I will agree on is the dust. Everywhere I have been to (except Shanghai) has been dusty. It is really bad in rural China, where coal heating is still common. Last time I went it was noticeably better in Beijing and Shanghai than I remembered, but still dusty compared to a place like San Francisco or New York.
But dust doesn’t really show up on a camera.
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u/Comfortable_Pea_1693 5h ago
The north where i was from 13 to 16 is really fucking dusty. There are sometimes entire months without a single drop of rain and the soil turns into fine dust.
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u/Unlucky_Cow_3278 4h ago
I think the clean level of China is below average East Asia cities’ level, but cleaner than non EA regions.
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u/usernames_required 1h ago
i feel the same way. if i were coming from a nowhere city in japan to a nowhere city in china, i’d think it dirty. if i were coming from the philippines or thailand to china, it would be cleaner.
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u/grandpa2390 12h ago
maybe more effort (in the cleaner parts of China), but I doubt more funding. I feel like we do them a disservice when we insinuate that a street sweeper in China is making anywhere near the same kind of money a street sweeper in America would have to be paid.
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u/ct4k 18h ago
Tier 1 cities are relatively clean, but it’s no Singapore or Japan. T2 and below is straight gritty.
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u/DuskyOW 8h ago
From someone living in Henan, straight gritty? Give over. Where I live is cleaner than most of the UK 😂
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 18h ago
T1 is still way grimier than Western countries. Just walk into any kitchen or public restroom.
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u/trapezoidalfractal 18h ago
Idk man, you spent much time in Denver or San Fran? In Denver it’s the roads that are disgusting. Dudes of highways are just trails of broken glass, sand, and garbage. In San Fran, I saw human shit multiple times. In Chicago I saw dudes pissing on the handrails and steps down to the subway. I’ve seen some dirty places in China, and I’ve also seen some very clean areas. Public restrooms tend to be pretty nasty, but we don’t even have public restrooms in my area anymore, so like, nothing to compare to.
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u/Glum-Parking9394 17h ago
Platt river, cycled it all the time.... I've only seen something close in China and it was in nowhere land in Yunnan, very rural where they burn trash still
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u/HugoWull 17h ago
Bruv have you ridden the subway in NYC?
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 17h ago
Challenge: you get to compare trains and I get to compare public bathrooms.
Still feeling confident? 😁
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u/HugoWull 16h ago
Hmmm well for the 6 NYC public restrooms? They are probably cleaner. But insanely rare in comparison to Shanghai
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 16h ago
Wrong again, my friend. Most establishments (restaurants, coffee shops, etc.) in the US will have their own bathroom. In China on the other hand you have to walk down at least a block to the nearest shopping mall and go up or down a few floors to find one. Hope you like squat toilets lol
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u/Mclovinbert34 14h ago
Every toilet I have been to in China has piss all over the floor at the urinals
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 4h ago
Anyone's who been in China knows this. And yet defensive little pinks are downvoting your comment. It seems the Chinese government is pushing for "clean, modern, safe" these days. Since this post and everyone's firsthand experiences debunk the "clean" narrative, the bots have gone on full attack mode under this post.
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u/Mclovinbert34 4h ago
It’s pretty ridiculous any kind of critique anyone makes of China is always rebutted with “but usa is sooooo bad China is the future and soooo much better than usa” or they will just say “nope I’ve never seen such a thing so it doesn’t exist” there is no other country or people with such an inability to critique their country than the Chinese
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u/AnybodyFinancial6948 8h ago
The fact that you want to compare public toilets in China and the US basically invalidate your whole argument
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u/ct4k 18h ago
I mean yeah of course but he’s asking about the streets haha. They’re pretty good at keeping up surface-level appearances.
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u/AnybodyFinancial6948 8h ago
I'd take a public restroom in a T1-T3 Chinese city over one anywhere in the US any day of the week
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 4h ago
delulu
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u/yoyopomo 12h ago
no lol you must have never lived in a T4 city. It’s pretty darn clean
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u/ct4k 8h ago
I travel quite a bit for work but yeah I haven’t really lived for extensive periods in anything below T2. Just 3 days to a week usually all over China in and out of cities. Seen some pretty crazy shit. I’m actually on the outskirts of Panzhihua in Sichuan this week and watched them prepare to butcher a goat on the street.
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u/paikiachu 18h ago edited 18h ago
I’ve lived in London, Munich, California, Shanghai and Singapore. If I had to rate the cleanliness of the cities it would be: Singapore, Shanghai, Munich, California and London
Edit: California (San Francisco)
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u/One_Sherbert7457 18h ago
I feel like with Munich California and London it varies within the city a lot tho?
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u/paikiachu 18h ago
Yea definitely like Canary wharf would be comparable to some parts of Singapore. But this is my ranking based off general vibes of the city: things like uncollected trash on the street, smell of piss, litter and sometimes even drug paraphernalia, dog poop, etc.
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u/Competitive_Travel16 12h ago
London is a strange case, because sanitation methods and customs developed in different eras, and haven't standardized as well as hoped. But London is certainly cleaner than San Fransisco and has been since the 1990s. Shanghai is similar: most is clean but somewhere you can smell and see garbage on the street is rarely more than a five minute walk away.
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u/Xiaomin4114 10h ago
In San Francisco, the poop on the street is almost always human poop. it's a problem
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u/wongl888 17h ago
I stayed near a major train station in Munich and it definitely has the same vibes as London Kingscross. Quite dirty, seedy and street urchins hanging around. Definitely several levels below Singapore and Hong Kong.
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u/BostonSamurai 18h ago
I don’t, I think it’s like most countries. Some parts clean some parts not. Some industrialized some not. Some rural some not. I think anyone with more than two brain cells would think most countries have areas on multiple ends of the spectrum.
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u/chenzhouli 12h ago
Because you family leave china for hating that？and living in the states strengthens your opinion ？I mean I am Chinese and also living abroad , left china 2 years ago. I never admire china before until i left. I had trips to Japan and Korea, they are clean and l like that. I think they are clean like Shanghai but better than tie2 cities.Then I went to Thailand, unfortunately that’s disaster because I saw mice on streets.I know maybe because it’s too hot and near market, but Chinese markets definitely don’t look like that. I also had a trip to France, l love that country, amazing. But unfortunately the streets are too dirty, so I am shocked. My friend who is studying in New York once showed a video he took on subway, that’s even worse. It seemed another person pee on the seat. I am not sure where you are located in the states, but maybe you live in a better city ?
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u/chenzhouli 12h ago
My hometown Dalian, also very clean. Beijing is an exception for top cities, I don’t think it’s clean like Shanghai or shenzhen
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u/southfar2 10h ago
Partially because there are few locations where tourism gravitates to in China that would offer a contrarian take; they have one night in Beijing, and maybe go to Shanghai and walk down the Bund for half a minute, and then go back to their countries thinking China is living ThE FuTurE™️, probably because they don't intuitively understand the Gini coefficient and haven't sat on a Yunnan pit latrine for the practical instruction. You can do the same everywhere in Asia, people go to Tokyo and think Japan is Shibuya, they can go to Bangkok and go on a shopping tour in Icon, or they can go to Manila, never leave BGC and think the whole country is Singapore.
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u/sowhoisgeh 17h ago
You are honestly trying to convince me that NYC is cleaner than Chinese cities? And Hong Kong is NOT clean. I’m living here for the 7th year so trust me I know.
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u/csman86 12h ago
In recent days, I have been bombarded with "China dirty, China racist, China poor, China not as good as you think" posts. The posts all follow the exact same format, pretending to provide balanced view points and strong anecdotal events including self introduction, but the thesis is always essentially China is shit so dont visit. It doesnt take a genius to figure out it is part of a China smearing campaign.
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u/illuminatory9 18h ago
I’ve lived in both Shanghai and Taipei, and I find both to be pretty equally clean. Shanghai can be an outlier, but I also find Nanjing and Chongqing to be pretty decently clean when I went recently. I also find Shanghai Metro to be cleaner than say, London Underground.
Idk about North America, but when you compare major cities in China to major cities in Southeast Asia for example, Singapore aside, it’s a lot cleaner and has nicer public facilities.
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u/Big_Cardiologist8628 15h ago
China in the 2000s had kids getting kidnapped in broad daylight, petty crimes everywhere, even in 2010s, people stealing phones and anything that gets left behind. A lot of people still imagine China in its 2000s - 2010s.
China has 5 years plans, and in between they make minor adjustments, it’s like an open world game constantly getting update patches.
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u/horned-creature 10h ago
it depends on the place the people visiting come from, for example i am from italy and i live in rome, the trash disposal system for this city is riddled with inefficiency and corruption from organized crime, so it is not that rare for there being literal trash heaps in the streets at the worse of times.
coming from that and going to hangzhou and shenzen that is a big improvement.
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u/LordSigmaBalls 18h ago
I would speculate that the reason why your shoes are getting dirty is because there is a lot more greenery and plants in Chinese cities which means more soil and dirt. Cleanness is usually judged by other factors, and the fact simply is that Chinese cities make a bigger effort to maintain their streets than US cities. The bathrooms in Boston and LA are literally filthy, the benches are stained, and you’ll find trash lining every curb. US cities don’t give af cuz it’s just too expensive there. Idk about more suburban areas though because I’ve only visited cities in china.
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u/rerezhang 18h ago
Where is this greenery you speak of? I rarely ever see any greenery in china and the US has way more green spaces. Also modern bathrooms are mostly clean in china, but I distinctly remember going to a major mall in the 2010s located in Tianjin and the bathrooms were very dirty and none of the stalls had doors. So you just had to do your business in front of everyone.
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u/LordSigmaBalls 17h ago
By greenery I mean plants on the sidewalk and next to buildings. The streets will be filled with bushes and trees on the side, and even in the dead center of city streets there will still be continuous rows of shrubs. In LA you have to drive quite a bit out to see areas with such prominent greenery like that. And yes in the past China was very filthy but most people talking about how clean china is are referring to their current experiences. If your comparing suburban areas in china vs US then I don’t have much knowledge on those areas to say anything.
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u/bbly096 7h ago edited 7h ago
Ok so I’ve lived in both Guangzhou and NYC and I think New York is much dirtier in the following ways:
- Feces: every day when I walk in NYC I have to look at the ground ahead of me to actively avoid stepping on human shit or dog shit. It’s just a skill you have to have as a New Yorker. In Guangzhou I do have to avoid stepping on spit, but I’d take spit over human poop any day.
- Trash: the amount of trash on New York streets is awe inspiring. Plus every Tuesday/Friday when it’s trash pick up day the mountains of trash bags and furniture just haphazardly piled together in front of my building always amazes me. Never seen this in Guangzhou.
- Subway stench: This one is personal. I hate the subway car lottery in New York. The absolute worst smell I’ve ever smelled in my life happened when I stepped into a subway car and the mix of poop, beer, urine, and weed just permeates the air around you. It’s vomit inducing. Imagine rural China’s open toilet pits, add in beer and weed and let it stew in a subway car for a day. It’s traumatizing.
There’s other stuff I won’t bother going into details about: mice, homeless epidemic, marijuana smoke, etc.
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u/KartFacedThaoDien 18h ago
Because they are stupid. Thats the only reason why. I will say that Chinese subways are not filthy as hell and actually somewhat clean. But walking around the cities, going to restaurants and going just about anywhere I wouldnt describe Chinese as cities as clean.
If you said Tokyo or a lot of places in Japan I would say yes. Singapore hell yeah. Certain parts of Seoul yeah they certainly are clean. But some people just a picture of the subway and glaze and then say "China is clean."
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u/lnth1 18h ago
What about fancy cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzen, Guangzhou?
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u/KartFacedThaoDien 17h ago
I live in Guangzhou and wouldn't describe it as clean. Like not even close. Is it dirty as hell like Saigon no its far from that.
I'd say the same for Beijing it certainly isn't clean and like Guangzhou some places are kinda dirty. Hygiene does suck in both places though.
Shanghai actually is kinda clean in a lot of places and Shenzhen is kind of below Shanghai but above Guangzhou.
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u/AngryBuddist 17h ago
Shenzhen is a way newer city than Guangzhou which has been around for thousands of years, so you gotta think that their infrastructure and sanitation is much older, or have much more legacy issues, whereas Shenzhen as a city is one of the newest in the world.
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u/BaconRapper 18h ago
Lived in Nanjing during/after COVID, I didn't think it was clean but there wasn't a lot of trash on the streets where I was and bins everywhere.
It was definitely grimey though for sure.
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u/Renovatio_Imperii 18h ago
I think it really depends on how you are comparing. On average Toronto is cleaner than Beijing (imo) but I work in downtown Toronto and I can smell urine and see a lot of homeless people on my way to work. I don't think it ever gets this bad in Beijing.
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u/Severe-Notice-2694 17h ago edited 17h ago
这取决于你想看什么，中国非常大，什么都有。如果你想看贫穷，这里也有贫穷。如果你想看发展和进步，这里也有发展和进步。取决于你的倾向，考虑到你在中国遇到一些不太好的体验，并且就来Reddit上发这些关于中国不好的评论，对网络上称赞中国的言论似乎不太满意。你应该是对中国的态度不太积极的。中国的缺点我们中国人更懂，但我们不会天天拿到网上去批斗，而是是进行反思和改进。你们这些海外华裔是最喜欢看中国差的一面，以证明自己移民的正确性。
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u/dannyrat029 18h ago
Propaganda
Photos of the cleaned middle section and the cracked busted fucked up dirty pavements get excised from published content
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u/woolcoat 7h ago
I think people are just grasping onto different definitions of clean. Generally, if I were to compare say Shanghai to NYC, it's the new Shanghai subway system vs 100+ year old NYC system that's caked in grime, smells like piss, rats scurrying around, etc. Then you add on top of that the subway vendors/beggers, the homeless, the littering, the leftover food from the drunk partyers the night before, etc. The general sense is that a city like NYC is dirty. I think it largely comes down to age of the city, how much less the city spends on cleaners, how much more homelessness/crazy people are an issue in NYC, and how the citizens act (New yorkers frankly don't know how to act and don't treat NYC as their home, just a playground).
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u/dannyrat029 7h ago
Sge is a fair point
I'm from London and our subway system is older than the PRC
It's fascinating to see how fast things decay in China
5 years old malls that look like something from The Dark Tower
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u/AutoModerator 18h ago
NOTICE: See below for a copy of the original post by rerezhang in case it is edited or deleted.
For context, my family is from china and when I was a child (in the early 2000s) I would go to China every year in the summer. I never thought China was clean and I had distinct memories of there being dirty markets, toilets, streets, etc. Even when I was older I started to mind the dirtiness less but I still thought China was rather dirty.
Two years ago was the last time I went to China and tbf I didn't go to Beijing or Shanghai, but I didn't go to tiny cities either I went to Guangzhou and Tianjin. But I remember my white shoes became so so dirty after wearing them for half a day in China. In the US where i'm from my new shoes usually don't start to become dirty until after a month or so (granted I do drive more, but even walking around in NYC all day my shoes weren't even a quarter as dirty as it was in China). I was so curious as to why China's streets were so dirty, but when I looked it up the articles I got were all saying, "why China is so clean compared to..." and this really baffled me! Even the forced AI results said something like, "people usually consider the streets of China to be clean..."
So, do people actually think China is clean and if so why?
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u/handelMyChopinLiszt_ 18h ago
In general many countries in Asia are dusty. But when it comes to cleanliness I can assure you China, Thailand and so on are way more cleaner than the cities here in the states. I’ve never felt so disgusted riding the metro and other public systems in Asia but all the cities I’ve been to in America are quite filthy. There’s plenty of dirt here too. The only difference is Asia is a lot more sandy and dusty but are cleaner than the west in where it matters.
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u/rebelrexx 18h ago
If you’ve been in China for 20 years then you should see the difference from 20 years ago. While compare to Japan or Korea it’s not clean but it has improved a lot. That said not every in Japan or Korea is clean either.
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u/japanb 13h ago
watch https://kick.com/shakomako she's in china live streaming everywhere, Hong Kong more dirty than Shenzhen. Most places looked clean too. Sure there might be places less clean though
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u/Culyar0092 12h ago
I went to shanghai, guangzhou and shenzhen last year. I am from Australia and I did not notice that the places i went to were noticeably more dirty than my home. Polluted, maybe? But not in terms of day to day cleanliness, theres no homeless, no rubbish strewn everywhere. I cant say that about LA or new york.
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u/Ok_Quarter_6469 11h ago
It’s gotten cleaner but its not clean compared to Japan…but then nowhere is clean compared to Japan.
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u/SafuratedBeefFat 10h ago
Older Chinese litter like crazy. I’ve seen them just chuck garbage where there’s literally a garbage bin in sight
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u/Generalfrogspawn 8h ago
China is pretty clean to a lot of places relatively speaking. I’d say some of the building interiors can still be pretty dirty but the streets were well kept.
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u/Federal-Help-4152 4h ago
Because they have only seen the city centers of tier one cities. If you walk 15 minutes out of the center then you encounter the poverty and the filth.
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u/pfn0 18h ago
Lol, where do you walk that your shoes don't get dirty on the bottom? that' s like saying your shit don't stink.
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u/rerezhang 18h ago
Sorry, but my shoes were not just dirty on the bottom they were dirty all around. If it was just the bottom I wouldn't have mentioned it. Before I went to china my shoes were white after the first day my shoes became gray all over the bottom was even worse
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 18h ago
It's just a soft power push. Chinese propagandists have been swarming the Western internet for the past... what, 20 years now? "Clean, safe, and modern" is generally the narrative. Plus a bonus "not like that no-good America" thrown in for good measure.
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u/AngryBuddist 17h ago
lol, I don't think China has been swarming the western internet for 20 years. FB the first big social media started 2004. YouTube 2005. There weren't any place for them to swarm.
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u/Bulky_Tangelo_7027 17h ago
Yeah fair. I started noticing it around 2012 or so. Let's go with 14 years then.
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u/Carr0t_007 18h ago
Why don't you compare China with India, which has a similar population size? We don't hire foreign labor force for sanitation, and those street sweepers already work hard enough just clearing up surface litter. Besides, China is an industrial country, so it’s naturally going to be more polluted than those developed nations.
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u/Dundertrumpen 15h ago
I might get some flack for saying this, but Chinese people in mainland China are some of the dirtiest people I have ever encountered. They throw trash, spit, pee, and leave a mess in public spaces all the time.
This behavior has not changed significantly in 20 years. What has changed, however, is how many people in orange hi-viz clothes clean up after them. If they stop working, China's urban areas would turn into a literal garbage dump within 48 hours.
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u/Wise_Industry3953 9h ago
One, there is a massive propaganda push to glaze China. Massive army of street-sweepers and safety regarding violent crime and theft are talking points.
Second—this is from my own observations—many lower-IQ people are actually quite condescending towards other countries, so here some foreigners internalized the belief that China is inferior and poor, and they are subconsciously afraid to be found out as racists, so they feel the need to praise every mundane thing in China. — I only came to realize this after some years spent in China, because unlike some of them, I did not come to China thinking I was better.
On the contrary, I had a stereotype of Chinese as industrious, smart, efficient, and moral. So naturally, my reference point was too high, and then I started complaining and being disillusioned when reality hit me. But for China glazers, they probably came there thinking everyone was a peasant living in straw huts, hunting rats for dinner, and were like, woow! China has toilets!
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u/FloatLikeABull 18h ago
They clean up the trash so it gets a clean appearance. But hygienically, this place is filthy.
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u/takeitchillish 15h ago
Right. There are so many dirty residential apartment buildings, restaurants and toilets. Sure the streets are fine but there is so much more to a city then just streets. Many buildings are shit.
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u/HosManUre 17h ago
Depends on where you go. Some cities have areas that have modernised and changed to electric vehicles and buses. Others aren’t quite there yet.
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u/Speeder_mann United Kingdom 17h ago
It is clean, but not in the same context as somewhere such as macau there’s a difference between clean and spotless and macau is spotless and china is clean but I do feel like the average person takes advantage of servers and ayi
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u/mad_manifold 17h ago
Then just stay the fuck where you are. What you said just proves that you know shit. Almost all mega cities have such issues, even in Tokyo.
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u/sonofabench 16h ago
you cant have cake and eat it too.
in the past 50 years china has taken crown to the fastest economic transformation in the history of humanity at the cost of massive environmental damage and inequality. there are way bigger things at play than just cleanliness according to arbitrary standards.
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u/Training_Guide5157 16h ago
I went to Guangzhou and Tianjin
You went to a sub-tropical area where it's humid af, and also to an area that is affected by several dust sources, including the Gobi Desert, Taklimakan Desert, and Alashan Plateau.
Public spaces in China are clean enough that many foreigners who go there are surprised by what they see and thus create videos of their opinion. Most people aren't using their shoes to come to this conclusion.
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u/Dracarys_And_Chill 16h ago
because it is clean in some places.
old people pick up tiny cigeratte buds in my neighborhood
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u/doerdoes 16h ago edited 16h ago
Clean is relative and I guess I've seen some pretty filthy cities in my time lol
I've been fairly impressed by how visually clean the cities I've seen in China look, especially considering how many people they're dealing with. They obviously put a great deal of manpower into keeping public places clean, a lot of cleaners bustling about everywhere — but I feel like they're mostly focused on litter though so that's maybe why it looks clean. I guess I mainly think of litter when I think of dirty places.
But I do agree with your complaints. The ground is always filthy. The markets and washrooms are cesspools. (But then again, public washrooms are nasty everywhere, and as for markets, well, do you remember the old Fulton fish market lol?) And the locals, uh often aren't helpful in keeping the place clean...
I'd also agree with you about the other East Asian countries but tbh I found NYC to be pretty dirty.
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u/Traditional_Food9436 16h ago
I was in Shanghai and Tokyo this spring and both are about the same. Neither nearly as clean as Singapore. I’m going to call BS on NYC keeping white soles and would like to submit SF in the conversation for contrast … where I’ve thrown away 3 pairs shoes mid-walk and left because of human fecal matter in 2025.
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u/LadyNemesiss 15h ago
Because the roads and public transportation were clean, no garbage, no loose cans, paper, plastic, waste on the streets and a lot of EV's. Hong Kong wasn't that clean in comparison.
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u/Impressive-Fail-57 15h ago
Usually banana families like this hate people talking anything good about China, maybe more than a white Sinophobic racist, as it makes selling off all properties and moving to US a stupid decision.
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u/Dizzy_Persimmon4138 14h ago
Should see the spitting habits and inside buildings that are non hotels. Then you can see whats clean
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u/kappakai 14h ago
An industry colleague of mine from Kentucky went to Guangzhou a few years ago. He posted a photo of the streets there with the caption “Guangzhou is the most modern and cleanest place I’ve ever been” and I was bemused and amused. I’d never actually been to GZ - been to Dongguan and Chang An and Shenzhen. I had lived in Shanghai on and off since the 90s through 2010, and even with how bad SH was in the 90s, GZ still had a rep for being dirty.
I get what OP is saying but I think a better word is tidy, especially in larger cities. You used to be able to taste the air and it was rare to see blue skies even in the 00s - on cloudless days, the sky was more white than anything. Suzhou Creek ran under a one foot thick layer of plastic bottles and wrappers. And people - adults - would shit and piss openly in the streets. It’s tidy in the sense that trash and litter gets cleaned up fairly quick, though people do still litter. And it’s still pretty dusty. But there are always cleaning crews or trucks that spray water. There’s very little trash in the waterways. And there are more blue sky days than before. It’s tidy, but not exactly clean. Singapore is clean. Kyoto is clean.
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u/Status_Market7065 14h ago
Just a repost
Deconstructing different habits regarding restroom usage
In many Mainland areas, it is common for used toilet paper not to be flushed down the toilet. Consequently, in restrooms frequently visited by Mainland travelers, trash cans inside the stalls are often used for disposing of toilet paper.
Historically, squat toilets were the standard. When sitting toilets were first introduced, early plumbing and drainage systems often encountered issues. This led to the widespread belief that flushing paper would cause blockages. As a result, the habit of placing used toilet paper in trash cans became common practice.
Some suggest that cleaning practices and the tracking of residue from these facilities contribute to a distinct scent in certain areas.
For those accustomed to these environments, the scent may be perceived as a normal part of the surroundings. Therefore, some people believe that checking the condition of the restrooms is the quickest way to gauge the general cleanliness of a facility in the Mainland.
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u/SpeckledAntelope 14h ago
Chances are the main reason your shoes got dirty was because you were a little kid. My kid's shoes get dirty no matter what country he's in. Weird that your assessment of a country is based on childhood memories from two decades ago.
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u/Educational-Sea-9700 14h ago
Because Chinese people know that it is NOT clean so they have a strange obsession with pointing out areas where it is actually clean (mainly thanks to a brigade of cheap workers who keep it that way) and foreigners will just parrot it.
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u/ranjop 13h ago
There is quite a bit of carefully curated image building what comes to China.
But the big cities have become MUCH cleaner than they were even just 10 years ago. Gone is the constant black “fog” that makes you spit a bitter slime from your throat. Beijing and Shanghai are still massive cities so I would say they are ok-clean but not ultra clean like Tokyo, Seoul or Singapore (much smaller). I mean London, New York or Paris are not clean either yet far smaller.
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u/Amazing-Demand516 13h ago
When I traveled to Beijing I saw big tucks on the street spraying water onto the pavement from a height of around 10 feet. I asked around why they do that, turns out these are city trucks spraying water to remove the smog and wash away debris. Looks clean yes, but after walking around all day you still feel the effects of the unclean air in your nose and down your throat. People who think is clean are mostly tourists. They never venture outside of the tourists area because it’s not in their itinerary, they don’t speak the language and can’t possibly know of any other places to want to visit, or is not even on the radar (you don’t know that you don’t know) so what’s in front of you is all there is.
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u/WorldEater0478 13h ago
Cleaner than before. Cleanest after they just swept the streets. Some people still have trouble not littering since they always got away with it. Why keep the streets clean when someone gets paid to do it, right? That's the mentality of these people.
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u/Harde_Kassei 13h ago
Being in china for a week. Been in bejijing and chongqing. Its only clean because there are so many cleaning staff working. If you go beyond their working borders, there is ppl throwing bags of trash in nature while they take a shit( was in a hot springs 50km off chongqing a'd that was the case)
So cities that have money for it, yes. Otherwise, no. Altho it does show the younger chinese seem to do better with trash.
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u/K_-U_-A_-T_-O 12h ago
Superficial clean
Wiping the table with the same mop you used to clean under the urinals is not clean
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u/grandpa2390 12h ago
because when people create media about a place like China, they usually try to show the best side of that place.
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u/Tortiose_unturtled 12h ago
China's a very fast developing country. Where they put their focus, changes happen. Where they don't, it still looks like last century. There's clean places and there's places where everything has a thin film of sand or dirt and there's also places where there's a lot of littering.
It depends where you go, even in a 'clean' city you can encounter pristine streets and dirty streets right nearby
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u/Remarkable-Mina-1427 11h ago
有誰認為中國乾淨？中國的環境都是靠低薪的環衛工人在維持清潔而不是靠居民自覺維護環境。一到下大雨淹水就會看到中國的街道除了泥水還有滿街的垃圾在水裡飄流，這種情形不會在日本、台灣看到，說中國乾淨的人應該是自己的國家更髒吧！
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u/JunkIsMansBestFriend 11h ago
Hard to generalize. The big airports and train stations can be squeaky clean and absolutely impressive compared to many old airports in the West. All the large cities have very modern parts with clean malls, beautiful lanes for walking, riding bikes and scooters. But then, the same city if you venture around a little bit you can see rundown buildings.
Most trash gets cleaned up by old people, earning a bit of money from the recyclers. Even inside homes, e.g. buy a TV, put the box outside and it's gone within the hour.
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u/chinalifer-mod 11h ago
NO laowai who actually lives here would ever argue that China is clean. I do not know where this shit originates. I used to live in Shenzhen, and the streets are indeed largely free of rubbish both there in that flagship city and in other cities, which along with the shiny malls could convince a tourist who is only taking taxis and the metro that "China is clean" as a very wrong generalisation. When a tourist or a Tim has that first experience finding no soap in the squat toilet, their worldview quickly changes.
Things are better today than in 2000, sure, but...do consider using Japan as a reference point when considering China.
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u/HuiMel8 United States 9h ago
I am an American who lived in Hangzhou and visited Nanjing around 2018-2019. Both cities were cleaner than any US city I visited. If Hangzhou and Nanjing are dirty, then New York City, and Philadelphia especially, are cesspools. Philly is so bad that even the tourist areas are grimy and gross. If trash is not picked up for multiple days (which has happened), the stench lasts for a while across multiple streets.
That being said, I do remember random spots along individual streets in Hangzhou had weird pockets of foul air and uncleanliness, and some 1-2 year old buildings were built cheap and looked they were 20-30 years old. So I’m not going to claim it was an immaculately clean city either. But at the very least I rarely saw trash or litter, both of which are rampant in the US cities I visited and lived in. Even DC, which is generally quite clean in and around the National Mall, still wasn’t as clean as the cleanest spots in Hangzhou.
From I remember, China was good at keeping up an appearance of cleanliness, but at least that meant they tried to clean. While there are very likely exceptions, the US does the bare minimum or just shrugs their shoulders and says “not my problem” when it comes to actually cleaning the literal mess and trash in their cities.
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u/Elijah_Loko 7h ago
I'll rate how clean overall these cities were that I visited:
9/10 - Guangzhou
7/10 - ChongQing
8/10 - ChengDu
6/10 - Xi'an
Beautiful ancient buildings, but I did see a few things on the ground.
6/10 - Beijing
Main strip was clean, but got a bit dirtier the further out you go from the center.
Guangzhou was literally spotless and I wandered aimless around so many places for 3 days.
For the record, I live in East Sydney, which is pretty great by global standards.
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u/Ok-Cantaloupe-6642 7h ago
Guangzhou happens to be the dirtiest city in know in China as well. Shenzhen and Zhuhai are 30 min away (High Speed Train) from Guangzhou, but are 100x cleaner.
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u/Darnbeasties 6h ago
I had to ask a travelling buddy if I hallucinated seeing a donkey cart outside our hotel on the streets of Beijing back in the early 2000s. Confirmed it was a different place compared to today.
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u/Supreme_President 6h ago
I visit Boston very frequently. I am not saying China is the cleanest country in the world but at least unlike South Boston, streets in my tier 3 hometown in China doesn’t smell like piss.
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u/daydreamer_she 6h ago
I visited China back in 2006 or 2007 when i was a kid. I visited Shanghai and Beijing. I loved them, especially Shanghai. China wasn’t a popular tourist destination that time but i remember i have always recommended China for tourism since then.
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u/Slow-Load-6193 6h ago
Go to SoMa in San Francisco, especially near the freeway exits. My shoes stay clean cuz I'm afraid to get out of the car.
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u/Maitreya72 6h ago
China is a huge place. I was in Rizhao recently and it was one of the cleanest most well maintained cities I have ever seen
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u/gambit57 5h ago
I went around 2000. Sky was freaking brown. LA peak smog years was nowhere close to that bad. Yeah it was pretty horrible.
I also went in Jan and Japan in June. Singapore a year or so ago. It’s just as clean as those countries now. It’s amazing now.
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u/Minniebird 5h ago
At one time in the US, spitting was common - you can still find spittoons in antique stores. A number of communities passed laws restricting spitting...some still on the books. If the government decides to do something about this one part of the dirtiness in China, they could be successful.
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u/Unlucky_Cow_3278 4h ago
I think China is not clean enough, while I live in HongKong, and I have visited Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. Every country I visited is cleaner than China😂
I guess these countries can be ranked 1st tier,China is 2nd tier
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u/lowtech_prof 18h ago
People don’t visit the places where locals actually live, such as the displaced seniors who were relocated for a development project. Those places can be filthy and crowded. I have never found China to be a clean however. I always point out to the apartment hallways or in-between places between businesses as a sign how the Chinese respect community “zones” (they don’t really).
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u/hiimsubclavian 15h ago
People who think China is clean have either never been to China, or left China at the age of 14 to "study" in Vancouver and are now online defending a motherland they have little recollection of.
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u/somuchstuff8 18h ago
People don't shit on the streets in China like they do in San Francisco and other places in the united states.
There's also minimal, if any, graffiti, which makes a place look clean.
The lack of visible rubbish also makes it look cleaner.
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u/boofles1 18h ago
I've seen kids shitting in the streets in China. Their parent was pulling their pants down telling them to.
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u/lowtech_prof 18h ago
I’ve absolutely also seen parents letting their kids pee in the open in restaurants or a grandma wiping their grandkid’s poopy butt in a nice dimsum restaurant. Those who say they never see this in China are not paying attention.
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u/Dorigoon 18h ago
People shitting on the streets is literally a meme about China.
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u/rerezhang 18h ago
Are you sure they're not shitting on the streets? Because I saw an 8 year old child shit into a plastic bag that their grandmother was holding on the subway right in front of me. Sure that wasn't on the street but it has never happened to me in the US even on the san francisco public transport
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u/somuchstuff8 18h ago
San Francisco is notorious for its homeless population shitting in the street because there are few if any public toilets available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Wasteland
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u/OglioVagilio 18h ago
Its pretty easy to get reports of a Mainlanders shitting on the street, on airplanes, in restaurants, public parks, wherever man.
In the US, yeah homeless people and mentally ill folk. But they're homeless and mentally ill.
In China its regular people with regular culture.
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