Shake Hands with Dirty

I am no germaphobe. I practice the ten-second rule for food that falls on the floor on a daily basis, and I’ve been known to go a day, or, um, 30 without showering (hello, Appalachian Trail). But my laid-back attitude about all things filthy has been put to the test since moving to China. I think that most of it has to do with a general ignorance/lack of education about germ theory here, which is frankly distressing. But on I go, being critical, which is easy to do from my perspective, having been educated from a very early age about germs and such. Here:

When Owen meets a Chinese child, the first thing they do is shake hands. Or, rather, “shake hands,” because, honestly, nobody under the age of three is doing this thing on their own. What this amounts to is a lot of forced hand-on-hand rubbing between Owen and other babies.