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Published: September 3rd 2009
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Feeling lonely?
Why go to the toilet on your own when you can go with a friend? Or a stranger...China doesnt mind. Forrest Gump famously said that his mother told him life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
The same can be said of Chinese toilets.
Once you get your head around the fact that the majority of Chinese toilet visits are not going to be a pleasant experience, it becomes a bit of an adventure. Just HOW bad is the toilet that the bus stops at on the side of a highway at 4am in the morning ACTUALLY going to be?
Approached with a large sense of trepidation, a lungful of air from outside, clutching your own packet of tissues with trouser legs pre-rolled to knee level, some toilets have truely surprised me. In the oddest of places where you expect the grimmest of the grim, one can find a shiny pristine PALACE of a toilet, equipped with toilet paper, soap and a spotless shiny receptacle in which to, you know....
The other side of the coin that the god of toilet-fate throws, provides you with a row of spaces, divided only by a low wall with no door within which Asian bottoms line up perched over a trench in the
Cut out the middle man
This kid moved so you can't really see the hole in his trousers and I didn't like to keep trying to get a photo, you know, photos of kids bums...its weird. But you get the idea. Wee-tastic. floor. No flushing, just a 2 foot drop to well, the bottom of the very public trench.
In these circumstances, the wary Westerner finds the cubicle in the darkest corner before beholding her bottom to the curious Chinese faces that DO want to look to see if everything is the same....
My sense of self consciousness has been stripped away and then stripped away some more while I have been here. Never comfortable with being shephered in to share toilet cubicles with drunken friends in Manchester and always finding the graffiti on the walls the ONLY place to be looking, I felt positively COMFORTABLE squatting side by side with Maria on the top of TLG. What a difference a few months make...
To think that China actually invented the flushing toilet!
It will be strange for me to go back to flushing toilet paper away. This took some getting used to, parcelling up my paper and chucking it in a bin, but I have discovered that girls are more comfortable with this than boys. Maybe it’s because we have more practise. The only thing worse that a Chinese toilet bin full of used toilet paper is
Tasty.
I actually bailed on this one. It was too blocked to even attempt a successful toilet stop. a toilet used by a dorm room full of Western boys who have successfully blocked the toilet rendering it unusable because they couldn’t bear to pop their paper in the bin. Fools.
I had an interesting lesson with my class on toilets. After teaching them all the different words for “number ones” and “number twos” we went on to discuss the pros and cons of Chinese toilets. Unsurprisingly, they don’t like them either. Especially, at the end of the day when ones legs are tired. Have you ever dropped anything down a squat toilet? I asked them.
-Yes, many times.
Well what did you do? Did you reach in and fish it out? What if you dropped something valuable down there?
- Getting a stick and get it out was a popular answer.
- Depends on where the toilet was. If it was my own I would get it out. If it was a public toilet, I would leave it.
I ended up getting a bbq grill to go over the toilet that was my shower room in Guangdong...would have cost me a FORTUNE in shampoo otherwise.
I have a friend in the UK who had to get a condom for his phone he was so skilled at dropping it down the toilet. Mike, if you ever come to China, just don’t bother bringing a phone with you. It’s gone.
My class were very much entertained by my re-enactment of the toilet I found myself in on Chinese NYE. Imagine the scenario:
I had been in a queue for the toilet and had been drinking beer, so I really need to go quite badly. I get inside the cubicle to find about a centimetre of “liquid” covering the whole of the floor area. (This is quite common, particularly as many toilets are communal and we all know how rubbish men are at aiming). Trouser legs pre-rolled so this is ok, but flip flops can be slippy. One must proceed with caution. I have my bag with me of course, but there is no hook on the wall, so as I get my trousers down, still trying to keep the material off the floor and thus avoid the material soaking up whatever is on the floor, I have to balance whilst also holding onto my bag. At this point, one realises that the lock on the toilet door (hey, at least there WAS a door) is broken, and this being a bar, there are people barging in all the time, and so one has to veerrryyyyy carefully lean forward, not so much so as to miss the hole in the floor, but enough the stop the door opening with the top of your head. Its a tricky position I can tell you. Then, while balancing, propping the door to with your head, holding onto your trousers and bag, you then have to get your toilet paper sorted. I’m telling you, if China was the centre of the universe and all life sprung from here, this very proceedure would clarify why it is that women became so skilled at multi tasking.
To be under the age of 10 years old makes it perfectly acceptable in China to just go to the toilet in the street. If you’re small enough, your grandma may hold you over a drain or a plant pot while you wee, but if you’re a boy and a bit older, or a girl for that matter you can just stand there in the middle of the path and go where you like. There are small puddles all over China of children’s urine. This is why everyone sits on newspapers.
Of course, very tiny babies have to be weed as well. It is rare to find a child wearing a nappy here. Young children’s clothes have a big hole in the crotch area. You see little brown bums poking out of every outfit. And they are trained to wee when their mother or grandmother makes a long low whistle. It’s surprising, impressive I guess, but never failed to make me feel a little bit uncomfortable...
And you will appreciate my discontent whilst travelling on a bus when I felt splashback on my leg. There is no denying the feeling of splashback. You know EXACTLY what it is the second you feel it. I looked at the woman sat next to me, holding her baby at arms length, or at least as far from her as she could whilst sitting on a bus on acocunt of the seat in front of her and everything, and the baby was just weeing.
That's all I have to say about that.
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Edgar Metums
non-member comment
Two Edgar's are better than one
Hello Edgar, I found your blog and like the fact that we both are in China. Myself in Hong Kong. Moved from Montreal with my wife, and will be hear at least 3 years. I hope you are enjoying your teaching assignment and your travels. About your toilet troubles my wife and I feel your pain. Good Luck. Edgar