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Squatter
This bathroom has two options. Often this is the better option of the two. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 上前一小步 。。。 文明一大步 . These instructions were posted on an engraved placard above the urinal in our local McDonald's men's restroom.
Traveling to China to live and work for the year seemed like a pretty exciting prospect. Our knowledge about the culture more or less amounted to, “They love NBA, ping-pong, and Michael Jackson.” Our language skill set lacked entirely in the written world and our verbal skills maxed out with “Hello, 1 … 2 … 3 … 4 … er … 5, and ‘toilet, where?’”. Of all the relevant issues that could have been zinging around in our minds, the biggest concern, of course, was one’s most basic call of nature; nature calling us and not being able…
As a distance runner with a pair of tightly-wound Achilles tendons, the cultural (and quite physical) hurdle of using Chinese toilets seemed a near-impossible proposition and preposition. Quite frankly, the whole idea intimidated the hell out of me. In the end, nine months later, we are still quite alive, happy and mostly healthy, and the concern that had initially dominated our worries has now slipped down to the end of
Sitter
The other of the two options. the list of small daily-life annoyances in China.
From our travels and experiences, we have found the Chinese to use four different genres of toilets; the standard, often
American Standard brand toilets and urinals, the Roman-style trough approach, the hole leading to a fertilizer pit, and of course, squatters. Like designing SUV’s for all-terrain driving, trucks for hauling, and Hondas for commuting, Chinese toilets answer unique needs with specialized and very intentional responses. They all smell bad, and as best as I can tell, the best way to tackle any Chinese toilet scene is to hyperventilate beforehand and go about one’s business quickly. Sometimes lighting a cigarette as a make-shift incense stick works as a reasonable combat technique too. Honestly, the few moments before visiting a public toilet is the only time in our lives that we wished we had cigarettes on hand full-time (hmmm…. note great new idea). No matter what the style, unless one regularly exploits the facilities in a 5-star hotel, toilet paper is not a part of the deal, not in schools, not in train stations nor post offices, restaurants, or banks; as a result most supermarkets devote entire isles to the sale of purse-sized
Rural Toilet
No plumbing needed! And the next day's fertilizer is just out the back! “facial tissue” packets.
Sitters. In homes and hotels, people most often use Western-style sitters. In the spirit of adding decoration to just about everything, toilet seats not excluded, one can easily purchase quilted toilet-seat covers at just about any street market. One perhaps can blame this on the chilly, but not quite frozen winters that dominate Jiangsu Province and its non-heated homes. The only thing worse than a bland-looking toilet seat is a cold bland-looking toilet seat… Regardless of how fancy the actual fixture may be, plumbing tends to be a bit less fancy and always undersized, thus guaranteeing a plugged toilet if more than one square of toilet paper passes. Thanks to the small, trembling pipes attached to the contributing end of toilets, most toilets make a companion out of small garbage cans sitting loo-side as the used-paper receptacle. More than once we have been in hotels with instructions, just in case the memo missed our inbox, to sit (as opposed to climb and squat) on the seat. Due to the need for said signs, when making use of public restrooms, we generally prefer the squatters to sitters, as a few not-so-touchable surfaces become removed from the
Sitter sign
For those of you unaccustomed to the "sitter" here are some directions. picture.
Squatters. Many older communities, especially that built in the style of
Hutong courtyard homes, lack indoor plumbing and instead rely on public toilets. One only has to keep their eyes peeled for “WC” signs to find a nice open-air, extra stinky, row of waist-high partitions. A second glance is then required upon arrival to recognize either 男 for men or 女 for women. These toilets make use of the classic Roman-inspired approach - take five or six stalls, line them up like a string of Christmas lights, and place one bisecting trough down the center. An around-the-clock trickle of water slowly fills a pail resting high above which, in turn, tips and sends a gush of water down a pipe and through the trough. Meter-high dividers sans door separate each stall and one can often find men squatting flat-footed with a cigarette in one hand and a cell-phone in the other, either chatting away or busily pecking out text messages, the whole time with their pants sitting around their knees. It wasn’t always this way, says Rob Gifford, in his book
China Road. Apparently, public toilets used to offer relative privacy for local patrons, complete with swinging
McDonald's urinal
This sign roughly translates to "one small step forward for man, one large step for mankind" doors. It wasn’t until Mao arrived to the scene when, in the early 1950s, the government made an odd Orwellian stroke of legation and removed all doors and high walls, thus removing all privacy and making even the simple daily task of evacuating one’s colon part of the socialist manifesto.
Busy fertiliziing. Thanks to the 1.3 billion people comprising China’s population, humans get the gold star as the largest single domestic producer of fertilizer, far surpassing the 100 million-odd head of cattle by thirteen to one. In many rural settings, (for us a reality just across the street) communities forego communal toilets in favor of single-family one-person sized huts with a collection pit directly below and behind the trough. These toilets require no flushing at all and are emptied in the name of thoughtfully giving back to the land. Often men and women alike dutifully march into their fields with two heavily swinging buckets attached to either end of a bamboo pole. This loaded bamboo pole then balances carefully on the farmer’s favorite shoulder and slosh, slosh, slosh away they go. One hand stays concerned with steadying the flexing bamboo pole while the other hand holds a second
Urinate the pond
This sign, literally translated, means "river urinal". Second character means convienent and the third means pond. Put 'convenient' and 'pond' together and you've got a urinal! As for river, well, you know...
We're still not quite sure how the english in the sign ought to read. long and slender piece of bamboo with a bowl, pail, or in some cases an old construction hard-hat, attached to the end of the stick. Long story short, carefully lower the buckets to the ground, tip the hard-hat, and start flinging. Often times while running through our local rice fields we feel the urge to pick up the pace a bit/hold our breath/break into a dead sprint as we pass the black bucket wielding farmers. It may not be the best fertilizer out there - raw human waste is quite high in nitrogen as well as pathogens such as Hepatitis A. But hey, there’s lots of it and it free for the schlopping.
Only until a relatively recent surge in wealth, most Chinese would scoff at the intentional purchase of “toilet” paper, an expensive product used once and then thrown out - old pages of newspaper do the trick just fine. That coupled with the unbiased agricultural application of human waste to innocent bell pepper patches can lead to food poisoning if one fails to wash their beautifully fresh green beans or broccoli. John Pomfret addresses the topic in his book, “Chinese Lessons” when he describes his sporadic discovery
Qingdao toilet
At squat-height level, this sign was posted on the inside of a stall door. of bits of newspaper that had somehow managed to “survive the wok.” It sort of puts a whole new perspective on why Chinese simply do not eat fresh salads. That said, folks, wash your veggies and get your shots -
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Donna White
non-member comment
Thanks for the tutorial
This is really hilarious. We should get one of those signs for our powder room (Sit style toilet. Do not step on). Donna