Much has been done by the Chinese in terms on construction of competition facilities and roads to prepare Beijing for the Olympic Games that will take place this August. In anticipation of the millions of visitors, numerous new hotels have been built to assure the visitors the same comfort they are accustomed at home. So, if you limit your stay to Beijing, there is no need to worry about hygiene - but should you venture out into the country for your once-in-a-lifetime experience, watch out!
Bathroom Towel Hangers
The subject of toilets has received much attention over the last few years because of the outcry from foreign tourists about the sad state of affairs of the public toilets. Like airports are the gateways into and out of a country, the first and the last thing that tourists see and take with them as an everlasting impression, so are the toilets the window to the personal hygiene and self respect of a people.
Bathroom Towel Hangers
How a man takes care of his bodily needs speaks volumes about the respect he has for his being - body, mind and spirit - the very essence that elevates him from animal to human being. It is incredible how the people of a society, so rich in culture, history and science can be so filthy when it comes to dealing with their own waste.
The filth is not just in the toilets, it is everywhere. It is ingrown in the customs of the people, who think nothing of spitting food out on the table, of throwing refuse under the table in any restaurant, no matter how posh or elegant, of throwing everything that is not wanted on the floor, out of the car, on the street without a second thought as to who would clean it up after them.
It is a paradox in China that the Government sends street sweepers out onto the nation's highways to clean the roads with broom and shovel while doing nothing to teach the children about cleanliness and personal hygiene. I suppose that the bathroom technology of the developed world will slowly spill over and change the toilet habits of the Chinese, especially now in light of the Olympics. In the meantime however, all I can do is hold my breath, and give an account of what I have experienced so far...
The standard toilet in China is the "drop toilet". It sits on a raised platform, about one step above the ground and about one meter square, and consists of two porcelain footrests that are connected with each other by an oval bowl with a two inch diameter hole on the bottom. One steps onto the footrests, balancing one foot to the right and the other to the left of the hole, gathers up one's clothes, squats over the hole and "drops" one's business down the hole.
Theoretically a very simple procedure, but practically a nightmare. First, there is no place to put one's purse or coat or other belongings; it is impossible to put anything on the floor, because the floor is invariably wet and filthy, and one can guess the nature of the wetness; second, gathering up one's clothes while balancing on the footrests and holding on to all other things, requires a certain amount of dexterity which can be acquired only after weeks of experience; and cleaning up after the business, i.e. using toilet paper, is a challenge in this position which is better left to the imagination.
The matter is even more complicated by the fact that the Chinese do not believe in toilet paper, at least there never is paper, which means that one has to supply one's own. This of course entails fishing a tissue package out from the purse, while praying that nothing falls into the hole in the process. After having mastered everything so far, getting dressed is even more difficult, because it is always more difficult to get dressed than it is to get undressed. Putting a pantyhose back on and tucking in a blouse while holding on to coat, purse, packages, etc. is quite an achievement, to say the least.
It is noteworthy that Chinese toilets do not have doors, and they do not have walls to speak of. The stalls have half-walls, about three feet high, that separate the drop toilets and most of them are completely open in the front. The more "private" toilets are turned sideways, with each stall being separated from the other with an L-shaped divider. Once in, the user thus faces the back of the person in the stall in front, rather than seeing - and being seen by - everybody else in the room.
I will not forget my first experience with this arrangement at the rest room of a restaurant in Chengdu. When I walked in, I stopped dead in my tracks staring at the scene before me - there were four stalls, all of them open and facing me, three of them occupied. The three women were squatting over the toilets, chatting with each other like over a cup of tea; the chatter was instantly interrupted when I walked in and replaced by return stares, as they were watching me collect myself and move to the empty stall.
It was a curious sensation being watched using the toilet. I am no stranger to nudity and neither to lack of privacy in situations that do not allow the luxury of privacy, but this was totally unexpected and thus both embarrassing and annoying. My consolation was that I did not know these people and that I would never see them again. Later, when it became apparent that I would very well have to share a toilet with a friend, I had already become numb to embarrassment - but never to annoyance.
Toilet cleaning consists of taking a bucket of water and throwing it over the entire toilet floor - a method I have observed on numerous occasions when I complained about the condition of the toilet. Nobody ever uses a cleanser or a brush, perhaps because these are too expensive to buy. The result of this toilet wash is that the entire area is even more disgusting than before, with pieces of loosened grit and grime floating on the now slippery floor which makes it dangerous to maneuver around in high heels and balance oneself on the foot rests.
Also, washing facilities, such as running water, a sink and a bar of soap are luxuries that only the most "modern" facilities could afford, which is to say, about 1% of the public toilet facilities. I have taken to carrying a bottle of soap and a handkerchief with me in my purse, plus numerous pre-packaged wet paper cloths to take care of such predictable emergencies.
It did not take long to figure out why there is such a stench in the Chinese toilets. At first I thought it was from the open hole, which is like an open sewage pipe; this is often the cause, but more often the stench comes from the used toilet paper, which is discarded in wicker baskets next to the drop toilet. For some reason, those who do use toilet paper, do not flush it down the toilet, but let it "air out" in these open baskets, which judging by the volume of their contents, get emptied only once a week.
Another reason is the lack of water to flush the toilets. About half of the public toilets that I was forced to use, had only a trickle of water that never sufficed to flush the waste. The accumulated stench has permeated into the walls and has taken on a permanency that cannot be removed. The general way of dealing with the offensive odors, is to open the doors to the hallways to let fresh air in. This however only results in spreading the stench around and opening one's private business completely to the everyone's view.
In public buildings, like the official government buildings and ministries, and all office buildings I have been in, it was easy to find the toilets - all I had to do was just follow my nose. The most appalling situation was in a brand new ministry building in Beijing, where the new marble drop toilets were opposite the official reception room. The stench was so bad that it was impossible to hold a conversation or drink the tea - yet none of the Chinese hosts seemed to even notice. I found this the general attitude of the Chinese - a shrugging of the shoulders, full acknowledgment of the poor conditions of the toilets, but absolutely no attempt to do anything about it. It seemed like an acceptance of an unavoidable fact of life that human waste was not to be bothered with.
Once, again at a restaurant, I was led to a shower booth instead of a toilet, because the restaurant owner knew that the toilet was covered with years of accumulated dirt. The shower booth was clean, but very impractical when used as a toilet. Not having the necessary equipment a man has, I found it impossible to aim at the water drainage in the corner of the booth, which meant that I was soon standing/squatting in a small puddle.
Not wanting to be as unsanitary as the Chinese, who would have just walked away, I had to carry out my used toilet tissue, and when I tried to "flush" the toilet, I got soaking wet from the shower head, which was the only source of water in this make shift toilet facility. Frankly, I would have preferred to go behind a bush instead of having to deal with this situation. Men surely have it much easier!
Two of the more ingenious toilets I have seen in China are worth mentioning: the first one in a restaurant, the other in a private home. The restaurant toilet had the usual L-shaped stall dividers, but instead of four stalls in a room, there were ten, two rows of five facing each other. One entered the toilet room and selected an empty stall either left or right of the middle pathway. Each individual stall was fully tiled and the room was free of odor. This had been achieved by an automatic flushing mechanism, which, like a little stream, was flowing in a trough between one's legs.
Instead of the usual drop toilet with its footrests and the sewage hole, there was this small channel, also neatly tiled, which ran in a slight decline from one end of the toilet room through all stalls to the other. The water running down this channel carried with it the waste from the first stall past the next all the way down to the last, where it was finally deposited of in the usual sewage pipe. The toilet had the advantage of being clean, but of course at the dubious pleasure of seeing someone else's turds swimming by...
The entire year that I have been in China, I have been invited only twice to a private home; the first time by a Parliament Minister in Beijing, who had an official reception room at home, which therefore does not really count as a private home, to discuss business; and the second time, in Hainan Province, by an ordinary person in a small village - to use the toilet.
We had driven all day to get to the site of our proposed chemical plant and were received by the local government officials - all men. When it was time to wash up for dinner, the men agreed that the government office ladies' toilet was unfit for my use, and so they asked one of the women workers to take me to her home nearby to use the toilet there. When she opened the doors to her apartment, I counted half a dozen people inside, who all giggled at my request and quickly pointed to a door down the hallway.
I opened it, and found myself inside a one square meter room, lit by a dim 25 watt light bulb. I locked the door with a simple push bar, hung my purse on the door knob and looked around. I instantly realized that this small space was used as toilet, washroom and shower all at once. On the floor there was the usual drop toilet. Above the toilet, hung from the ceiling was the shower head, and neatly tucked in a corner was a very small wash basin.
The shower water would run off in the toilet, and all one had to do while taking a shower was to watch out so as not to step into the sewage hole. A couple of nails in the wall served as towel or clothes hangers, and in the wall opposite the wash basin there was a brick removed, which was used as shelving unit for toothpaste, toothbrushes and soap. I even found a small mirror above the wash basin, for shaving perhaps or the ladies' toilet, and a roll of toilet paper stuck on a protruding nail. Although the walls were not tiled and the paint was chipped in many places, the toilet was clean and there was no offending smell. I marveled at the use of space and how six or more people could manage with such a small multi-use facility.
I am glad that I had the opportunity to see this family's private home and toilet, because it showed me that where there is a will, there is a way - even in China. Assuming that all private homes are kept like this one, it still leaves the question of why the public places are such a disgrace...
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Bathroom Towel Hangers
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