We have a housekeeper that comes once every other week to help out with some of the heavier housework. She is originally from the Philippines but has worked in different places around the world. So far she's mentioned working in Saudi Arabia and in Germany, where she met her husband, an American contractor who now works here in South Korea. She cleans houses here to help pay for her mother's dialysis treatments back in the Philippines. Her English is near-fluent, so we have all sorts of interesting conversations while she's here at the house.
Yesterday she told me something I had never heard before: the general consensus among Asians is that Americans are pretty dirty. She, (she was quick to assure me) being married to an American and having lived outside of Asia most of her adult life, doesn't necessarily agree, but that's what other Asians tend to think. She was worried that I would feel insulted by that, but I didn't. Every culture has opinions on every other culture they know about and human beings can't help make comparisons with each other. Europeans for example, tend to think Americans are far too concerned with cleanliness. However, that idea did get me thinking.
One reason Asians might think Americans are not clean enough is that we tend to wear our shoes inside our houses, at least in many areas of the country. Certainly movies and TV shows reflect this habit. Most people in Asian countries really don't understand this habit and are super strict about no shoes in the house. You take your shoes off at the door and the houses I have been in have designated areas for shoes and plenty of spare slippers on hand for visitors to wear. Asians also generally sweep and mop their floors on an almost daily basis. Based just on this criterion, Americans are not as clean as Asians.
However, the circumstances behind this difference in habits also makes a huge difference. South Korea is considered to be a developed and wealthy country, but outside of the bigger cities it is still appears to be well within the 'developing country' category. The roads are narrow, roughly paved, sometimes not at all, and good sidewalks are rare. There is good trash pick-up and littering isn't a huge problem, but in some places the trash will pile up on the sidewalks or on the side of the road for a day or two. There are also plenty of stray dogs and cats (and probably other small animals) roaming around. And what is true of South Korea is even more so true of most other Asian countries. All this to say, your shoes will get a bit dirtier in Asia then than they will in most places in the U.S. This makes the shoe-and-floor criterion of cleanliness quite reasonable here.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, this is the primary criterion of cleanliness around here. In person and on expat forums we hear complaints about Koreans not washing hands after the toilet, not using tissues on their noses, and spitting in the street. This is by no means true of all Koreans, but it is wide-spread enough to be noticeable.
Additionally, directly after this conversation with my housekeeper she offered to show me how to make chicken Adobo, a well-known Filipino dish. The first step was, I learned, to wash the chicken under running water. I had just washed a load of dishes, which was sitting in one side of the sink. As she washed the chicken, all of the clean dishes got sprayed thoroughly with chicken-water. Then the spoon she used to taste the sauce got dipped directly into my container of sugar. I rolled my eyes a bit internally and re-washed the dishes after she left. I'll probably let the sugar problem go since it will get heated one way or another before we consume it anyway.
So, really, what does 'clean' mean?
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