I don't expect that, even after a year in China, I will have become noticeable more like a Chinese person (even if I have shaved.) My American values and American habits will continue to dominate my personality. That's not necessarily a problem. But I have begun to envy one especially Chinese talent.

Chinese people have the ability to go to sleep at any time, in any place. Being at work is no obstacle to taking a snooze, in fact, for some jobs, it appear to be an entitlement. I don't think we have ever been to a museum where the majority of gallery guards were *not* asleep. The job description must say "Insomniacs need not apply."

I will say that most people do need to sit down. And it helps if there is a horizontal surface somewhere about chest height. Under these ideal circumstances, a person will simply lay their arm out, place their head on it, and start dozing. And while we see people sleeping at all times of the day there is one period in which it is sanctioned and almost expected. This is the two hour or longer stretch after noon, know here as xiu xi (sounds like "show she") which is the Chinese siesta.

During xiu xi you can expect about every fourth shopkeeper to be asleep, quite publicly and sometimes quite comfortably. If there is a large stuffed armchair or sofa in the business place, that's where they'll sleep. If it's at a market stall, then the merchants will push aside the carrots and cabbage and lay their heads in their place.

We haven't figured out the acceptable protocol for dealing with a sleeping shopkeeper. Do you wake them up as soon as you enter their business? What if you're just browsing? If you don't buy anything, they're going to be doubly mad, first because they didn't make any money and then, even worse, because you woke them out of a perfectly good sleep.

So maybe you don't wake them up. But then what happens if they wake up while you're in the shop? Maybe they'll think you're a crook out to take advantage of their well deserved rest. Maybe they arm themselves against just this kind of intrusion. I don't expect that they'd have a gun, but even a knife or club would be scary. Even an angry, cranky, just awakened, unarmed merchant, shouting frantically and incomprehensibly, is nothing to look forward to.

So we've never gone into a shop where anyone is sleeping, even when it looks like they have something we'd like to buy. Too risky. Museums are another story; we've already paid to get in, so we're not intruders and frankly, the museum staff seems to have no commitment to protecting the collection. And we've never seen anything that we be interested in taking, so it's pretty safe. It does make you wonder why they bother having guards, though.

Deb came up with a pretty good explanation for why there's so much sleeping in public. It's because people spend so much of their time there. Most shops, especially the small mom and pops, open by 7 AM and won't close until after 10 PM. (We can't speak for the times outside these limits because *we're* rarely awake outside of these hours.) And it's not just sleeping. People routinely brush their teeth at the side of the road, or wash their hair curbside, using a metal basin and washcloth. Since many homes have no running water this is all understandable.

What astonishes me is that people are utterly unselfconscious about all of this. It's no different for them than it is for us to see someone reading a newspaper on a park bench; it's a private activity sure, but you don't have to do it in private. I have no doubt that this unselfconsciousness begins in infancy, due to the way that Chinese children are toilet trained. (Sensitive readers: see you next week!)

Diapers are not a traditional Chinese garment. What children wear are pants that are essentially two separate legs, held together at the waist, but entirely open at the crotch. All the kid has to do is squat and they're good to go. Even before they're old enough to figure out that they need to squat, their mother or father only needs to plop them down by the side of the road and aim them in the right direction.

Adults do seem to have a sense of the right and wrong place for toilet activity. I once saw a woman hold her infant son over the small trash barrel at the department store entrance while he contentedly peed, avoiding a messy situation once indoors. Children learn standards too. In the courtyard that we pass through on our way to the neighborhood produce market, we once had to step around a young girl, maybe 3 years old, carefully taking a crap on a small square of cardboard. Presumably, that was her "pooper scooper." I was impressed by her diligence and amazed that she could be so blase.

We do see diapers for sale in N-Mart so change is in the wind. But I think it will be a hard sell. While it would be appalling for most Americans to consider the prospect of curbside latrines the Chinese must find it incomprehensible that we allow children to take a crap inside their clothing (!) and then let them walk around that way until some indefinite time when it's convenient for us to clean them up (!!!)

You have to understand that the Chinese won't even use handkerchiefs because the thought of first expelling all that disease laden mucus essentially into your hand, and then putting it back into your pocket is too disgusting to even consider. Much better to spit it out, or hold a finger down hard on one nostril and blow stiffly through the other. Get rid of it!

In one of Deb's classes she explained that in American, customs are different and this behavior would not be acceptable. They seemed willing to deal with odd foreigners ("When in Rome...") But they thought Deb must be kidding when she told them that if you accidentally got a bone in your mouth when eating fish, you had to put the bone back on your plate. On your plate! Why not just spit it onto the floor? Or at least put it on the tablecloth for God's sake! But back on your plate! That is *so* unsanitary!

So the standards are different and I'm not about to say who's right. In the best of all worlds we could agree that both countries are right. I don't savor the prospect of finding the gutters lined with baby turds, although I must honestly report; that does not happen. (I do not care to undertake a research project however, to determine why.) At the same time, being childless, I have avoided ever changing a diaper. From my perspective, that responsibility leaves a lot to be desired too.

But let's take this one step at a time; anyone want to join me in a National Association for Public Sleeping?