Sidewalk spitting and social standards

Westerners who come to live in China for the first time are all strangers in a strange land, and they adopt various strategies to get along. Some people are like sponges, immersing themselves in the culture and absorbing all they can. Others, like rocks, absorb nothing.

I wanted to be a sponge, not a rock. And so I began making careful observations. My notebook filled rapidly with behavioral models as I've expanded my laowai checklist.

Take spitting on the sidewalk - not just ordinary spitting but what is known in parts of the United States as "hucking a loogie". It consists of coughing up a blob of phlegm, or snorting it from one's sinuses, and expelling it forcefully onto a nearby target. Many Chinese men are expert loogie huckers.