Your plate isn't clean unless it's been wrapped in plastic

Photos here and here

Recently we've had the pleasure of dining in two local restaurants in Qingpu Town, technically part of Shanghai but very close to Jiangsu Province, and both times our plates, bowls, cups and spoon came vacuum packed in plastic, supposedly "sanitized" for our pleasure. We had never seen this before, despite having dined at our fair share of greasy spoons throughout the country. But the folks we ate with last night said plastic wrapped tableware is actually quite common, not only in Qingpu, but in Chongqing and other cities throughout China. Is this true? Have we totally missed the trend toward the restaurant equivalent of the plastic covered couch? It just looks so classy. If it is a trend, can it survive the upcoming plastics ban?

We'd like to see a Mythbusters episode test whether tableware packed in this manner is actually cleaner than the stuff we normally use in restaurants. Or maybe that's a bad idea. The results would probably lead us to avoid eating out altogether. And we don't cook much.