Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
habits slide when I was there, in places with inadequate heat and
sometimes no running water.
And just so you don’t think I am being prejudiced, let me be the
first to say the Chinese are also less than fastidious, unless they are
well-off and can afford modern conveniences. I am speaking, of
course, of the rural Chinese in China, the China under Communism.
Cleanliness among comrades has become less valued than saving wa­
ter. I have observed the greasy hair, matted into whorls and cowlicks
formed during sleep. And the clothes—heavens!—they are impreg­
nated with months of fried cooking smells. Theirs is the smell of
pragmatism, of getting things done, with cleanliness being a luxury.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not obsessive about cleanliness, not
like the Japanese, who soak in a deep tub of near-boiling water. I
never did care for that alternative, to be scaldingly clean, your skin
sloughing off in your own soup, the rest of you bleached to the bone.
Why, even their toilets are equipped to spray your bottom with warm
water and then dry it with wafts of air, so that you might never have
to touch that part of your anatomy again. This strikes me as abnor­
mally antiseptic.
And while I’m on the topic, I can’t say that cleanliness is renowned
among the British I have known. Since recorded time, the Chinese
and Burmese have made unkind asides about them. Theirs is a spit-
and-polish kind of clean, a shiny shoe, a scrubbed face, while parts
unseen are left untended.
The French are so-so, in my estimation, though I don’t have a
tremendous amount of experience here, since they are a people not
known to willingly mingle with others who do not speak their lan­
guage perfectly. But you do have to wonder why they invented so
many perfumes.
Whereas many Germans, despite their tendency toward neatness,
emit a mustiness that is overpoweringly strong, the men especially,
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