158 Hygiene

Nadya Okamoto is the founder and director of the youth run organisation “Period” who provide and celebrate menstrual hygiene through advocacy, education and service. She talks about how experiencing some sort of homelessness herself during her university years inspired her to reach out, particularly to homeless women, and goes on to tell the story of how the organization expanded from there. ShaoLan teaches her the Chinese word for hygiene, as well as for lots of other menstrual products!

In Chinese 衛/卫 means to “defend” and 生 means “to give birth,” or ‘life,” or “raw.” So, in this case, we can take it to be “衛生/卫生” meaning “defending life” or simply “hygiene.”