Hand Towels Are Always Wet

You're finishing up washing your hands in your Chinese friend's bathroom. You reach for a hand towel to dry your hands, but it's wet. All the hand towels are wet.

You try to make due with toilet paper, but it crumbles to pieces because it's too delicate so you settle on drying your hands by wiping it on your pants like a 5 year old.

You leave the bathroom to find everyone staring at you. Your Chinese friend asks, "Why'd you pee in your pants?"

You respond, "I didn't. All your hand towels are wet. I had no choice but to dry my hands on my pants. Why are all your hand towels wet?"

Your Chinese friend doesn't answer you. He smiles and walks away while everyone else is still staring and wondering why'd you pee in pants.

Since your Chinese friend won't tell you what's going on, yours truly will fill you in...

Our hand towels are always wet because we don't use them as hand towels. We use them to wipe our faces periodically through out the day. We rinse it thoroughly with hot water, squeeze out the excess water, and then use it wipe down every nook and cranny on our oily Chinese faces.

Most Chinese people would have survived your predicament just fine because they always carry a handkerchief or a small pack of tissue in their pocket. This is common practice because stuff like that in China is like healthcare in America. You provide for yourself.

A couple learnings to remember...

1. Bring some tissue or a handkerchief with you before entering your Chinese friend's bathroom because there won't be a single dry towel in there.

2. A metric for measuring how Chinese your Chinese friends are: If every hand towel in every bathroom is wet, your Chinese friend is a 100% certified Chinese. If every hand towel in every bathroom is dry as the Gobi desert, your Chinese friend is a 100% white-washed Americano.