If you are sitting in your room on a hot sunny day and you hear the tinny, jingly-jangly sound of "Pop-Goes-The-Weasel" or "Jingle Bells" outside, don't go rushing off for a choc-ice. You may well find a smallish white vehicle but it won't be an ice-cream van. Over here in China, well in Baiyin at least, it will be the dustbin lorry (that's garbage truck to all you left-ponders).
Why exactly the dustbin lorries play Jingle Bells is a mystery to me but that's what they do.
Actually rubbish collection is all a bit of a msytery to me. There seem to be large numbers of people who make their living picking through other people's rubbish. I can throw away a large bag of mixed rubbish, walk past an hour later and find that any glass has gone, any paper and cardboard has gone and any plastic bottles have gone. That ice-cream van sound-alike has a couple of people on it who shovel up whatever is left.
If I watch from my window for half an hour there will be three or four different people spending time searching through the bins.
It's a very different kind of recycling to our bottle banks and recycling centres back home.
William Labov, RIP.
6 hours ago
