Our older daughter rolls her eyes whenever I bring up the subject of saving anything – energy, leftover food, etc. She’s lived in an era of abundance. I, on the other hand, am the son of parents who lived through the Great Depression. We were told to eat everything on our plates.

This small clash of values goes on in Chinese homes all the time.

Only it can seem more extreme because the changes have come much more quickly and dramatically. This came to mind after reading a blog post from another Westerner, this one living in Shanghai. He talked about a conflict with his live-in partner’s parents over – get this! – toilet paper. Apparently there are a lot of people in China with no appreciation for soft toilet paper. He starts by talking about the end of an evening’s outing:

The parents live in a slightly remote part of Shanghai, only accessible by bus or taxi, and they always refuse to take a taxi because its too expensive (even if I offer to pay).  I told JJ to tell them to just stay the night at our house, that made the most sense and it was totally fine by me (and of course by JJ).  We do have an extra room and I did buy this couch bed for this very reason.  So it only made sense for them to stay, especially since it was holiday and JJ was not working.

Here comes the kicker.  They were at first totally against it.  Why, you might ask?  Well it was not for the normal reasons you might imagine, such as ‘we don’t want to intrude’, ‘we have plans tomorrow morning’, we simply want to get home’, ‘we don’t like the couch bed’.  None of these things mattered to them.  Instead, the issue at hand was literally:

We don’t know if we want to stay because the toilet paper I buy is too soft for them and they really don’t like using it.

Now lets get the facts straight.  I am not a freak or anything.  I buy what I consider to be normal toilet paper, you know the middle-of-the-road priced roll you buy in packs at the store.  I don’t even go top of the line (because I’m too cheap).  So what in the world could be wrong with my toilet paper?

Well, it turns out they really cannot use the ‘Western’ style toilet paper.  They only use the toilet paper sheets that are a darker shade of brown, more rough and stacked on top of each other.  A good comparison would be the toilet paper you’d find at a public restroom in a gas station, you know, the ones that require a key and have the toiler paper dispenser that spits out paper that resembles paper towels more than toiler paper.

So not only do they prefer to use this kind of toilet paper, but they went to the extreme of this opinion and considered traveling an hour on a bus all the way back home at 10:30pm to avoid using my ’soft’, more expensive toilet paper, if, heaven forbid, they needed to take a trip to the WC.  Fortunately, they are not just totally insane (I say that with the best intentions).  They decided that if they could find a local convenient store that sold their ‘favorite’ style toilet paper, they would agree to spend the night.  And what do you know, they found such a store, purchased a little travel pack and was ready to go.

So there you have it. Mr. Whipple would be out of business in China. (For non-Americans, Mr. Whipple was the character in U.S. television ads a generation ago who warned customers not to squeeze the irresistably soft Charmin toilet paper.)