Use of Soap in China

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

Recently, I learned that many Chinese avoid using soap to wash dishes because they believe that soap can make you ill, or kill you. Have you ever touched a dish that was washed (actually rinsed) with just plain water? Yeah, it's usually covered with a film of grease or whatever was on it, or in it. Need to use a bathroom in a business, hospital, or restaurant in China. Sure, they have them, but after you finish your business good luck finding soap. It's not likely to happen. And towels, fuhgetaboutit.

 

Also, there are many Chinese who refuse to use a washing machine. Now, I can agree with this in part as most Chinese washing machines are crap tools that greatly reduce clothing life simply because they are too rough. So, this fuels the belief that washing machines are bad and washing by hand is good.

 

I'm living in the stone age....haha.

Edited November 17, 2013 by GuangDongExpat (see edit history)

[Randy W]

. . . and the dish sanitizers tend to just bake that on

 

I think the soap and towels tend to disappear from most bathrooms that have them, although I've seen soap dispensers in more than a few restrooms.

 

But Jiaying actually wanted a dishwasher for our new place. We got the special order no problem, but then the finishing crew had never seen one before. So the dishwasher was the first thing delivered to our new home, before any finishing work had started just so they could make sure and get the hook-ups right. They then shuffled it around from room to room to keep it out of the way until the time came to actually install it.

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

. . . and the dish sanitizers tend to just bake that on

 

I think the soap and towels tend to disappear from most bathrooms that have them, although I've seen soap dispensers in more than a few restrooms.

 

But Jiaying actually wanted a dishwasher for our new place. We got the special order no problem, but then the finishing crew had never seen one before. So the dishwasher was the first thing delivered to our new home, before any finishing work had started just so they could make sure and get the hook-ups right. They then shuffled it around from room to room to keep it out of the way until the time came to actually install it.

 

Yeah, agree about those heated dish sanitizers. They are absolutely nuts. There is a practice in Guangdong before people eat in restaurants where they take all dishes and wash them at the table with hot tea. Yeah, that's gonna work...haha.

 

Many Chinese women consider dishwashers to be a statue; something to look at, but never use.

[amberjack1234]

Recently, I learned that many Chinese avoid using soap to wash dishes because they believe that soap can make you ill, or kill you. Have you ever touched a dish that was washed (actually rinsed) with just plain water? Yeah, it's usually covered with a film of grease or whatever was on it, or in it. Need to use a bathroom in a business, hospital, or restaurant in China. Sure, they have them, but after you finish your business good luck finding soap. It's not likely to happen. And towels, fuhgetaboutit.

 

Also, there are many Chinese who refuse to use a washing machine. Now, I can agree with this in part as most Chinese washing machines are crap tools that greatly reduce clothing life simply because they are too rough. So, this fuels the belief that washing machines are bad and washing by hand is good.

 

I'm living in the stone age....haha.

My mother in law told me that about he dish liquid. I think that it was to get me to use less of it.

 

Larry

[danb]

Hello, On my trips to China I have noticed and found it interesting the use of tea of a sort of soap. Both for dishes and hand. DanB

[tsap seui]

While I do seem to recall someone wiping down a dish in a restaurant with tea, I have a very limited knowledge of this subject, all from my wife. She is the cleanest woman I have ever met. She used and uses dish soap on our dishes in China and Uncle Samville. Uses hand soap, and she has just recently told me that the laundry soap I bought SUCKS!!! She wants the STRONG stuff, no matter the cost. LOL Aiee yah...I thought I had done gud. In Chinartucky when she was outfitting our home she bought a Samsong clothes warsher. When I take her to one of her appointments with the VA she always goes right to those little dispensers they have everywhere for hand cleaning, gets a dose of foam and alcohol and rubs it in.

 

I asked her about Chinese folks using tea to warsh their hands. She had the most quizzical look on her face, even when I made sure she understood...said she had never heard of that practice. Then I asked her about tea for cleaning dishes, and she quickly said she had heard of that but that she didn't do that. She asked me...."are you talking about hot people?"

 

I have no doubts about the use of tea for cleaning hands and dishes. I do have grave doubts about my wife being a true Chinese though. I often think I have been short changed in many respects. I fear she is a Chinese knock off of a Chinese woman. My Gawd, she has never told me...."other Chinese woman says whata whata whata" like it was the gospel truth. Oh, wait a minute, she did once about the Social Security Administration paying out my SSDI to both our son and herself. I tol' her she was crazy, and so was the Chinese woman that tol' her that. Turns out, they were both right. The day I went to the SSA building and signed them up for their payments...well later that night, on my supper plate there lay a flat road kill crow for my meal. She didn't say anything else as I took in my sumptuous meal, just asked me, "you want any rice with that, my dear waa waa?"

 

As far as what is in a Chinese bathroom, on 7 trips I was always lined up with the guys you see writing their name on the side of a building, or in the dust on the side of the road, so...what is or isn't in a Chinese bathroom, other than our home, escapes me. I join the boys that take the easy artistic route.

 

tsap seui

 

Have I been tricked by Chairman Mao, his very owndamnself?

[Randy W]

The tea is used as hot water (it's usually hotter than what they'd serve as drinking water) - to rinse off the dishes and the chopsticks. I don't let my wife do that anymore with my own table stuff. Never seen anyone wash their hands with it, though.

[danb]

Ok ok maybe I should explain my comment. I thought everyone else would have seen the same thing before. And perhaps my choice of words weren't the best. No one else has been to one of local restaurants serving the local food? You know the type that has an extra 4 or 5 tables set up outside with the elegant white plastic chairs. The waitress brings out the china, the glass wear, and the chopsticks. The small glass and cheap white china comes wrapped up in clear plastic. What I have often seen is the plastic comes off and the dishes and the chopstick are "sterilize with the hot green tea. And then after eating the hands (from slightly greasy finger licking food) may get a good rinsing with the hot green tea. I guess all this rinsing is why a larger kettle of tea is usually brought instead those little teas pot we get when we go to a Chinese restaurant in the states.

[warpedbored]

My wife used to do the tea thing with tea cups at Chinese restaurants when she first got here. As far as using dish soap she has no qualms about it what so ever.

[Mick]

Li has no aversion to using any kind of soap. When living in Shantou, I sometimes noticed people washing tea cups with tea and maybe even spoons. I don't recall ever seeing anyone wash their hands with tea.

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

Li has no aversion to using any kind of soap. When living in Shantou, I sometimes noticed people washing tea cups with tea and maybe even spoons. I don't recall ever seeing anyone wash their hands with tea.

 

I never once saw anyone wash their hands with tea. Especially at a table at a restaurant. When you consider the Chinese aversion to touching anything they eat with their hands. I've only seen the practice of washing dishes at the table using tea in GuangDong province: Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I've never been to Shantou, but I suspect they do also.

 

If you go to a nicer restaurant, they will not bring the giant tea kettle to the table and a large empty bowl to pour the waste tea used to clean dishes. Truly, it's quite a ritual, that would not be needed if they simply washed all dishes with soap and hot water. It did occur to me however that the Chinese myth that using soap for dishes will make you sick may have some merit if the dishes are not fully rinsed of soap residue. Consider that many Chinese do not have hot water in their kitchens, or mistakenly used soap as if it's a sanitizer used to coat dishes and not rinse. If used that way, you might get a little tummy-ache.

Edited November 17, 2013 by GuangDongExpat (see edit history)

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

I found these youtube videos of a woman washing dishes with tea. The first is a short example. The second, is using hot water.

 

 

Edited November 18, 2013 by Randy W
embed (see edit history)

[Randy W]

I found these youtube videos of a woman washing dishes with tea. The first is a short example. The second, is using hot water.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEv7gGNAH5A

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnTzRWib9ps

 

Yes - that's exactly what my wife does - and I don't let her do with mine. It's pretty rare that I see someone else doing this.

 

She'll often bring her dishes and utensils along, including when we go to her mother's.

[Dennis143]

I understood that cleaning utensils and dishes at the table using tea wasn't the tea, but the scalding hot tea that would sterilize them.

 

My wife does this here in the US mostly when we eat pho at a vietnamese restaurant. Truth is, I will use/inspect the restaurant's restroom to determine the restaurant's cleanliness before we dine there. Pho restaurants often get low marks.

[Randy W]

The advantage to tea (I think) is that you know it's been purified (heated hot enough to MAKE the tea, even if it's cooled off a little).