Not So Modern Toilets

2009 08 – Beijing

Beijing has more public toilets than any other city I've been in. At face value, that might sound very civilised and progressive, but there's a very good reason for their frequency: many private dwellings in the hutongs (hoo-tong - small alleyway) don't have their own facilities.
Some years ago there was a drive to clean up the capital and the installation of many public conveniences was part of that.
I'd already got used to the squat toilet common in Beijing and much of the world, and after a couple of weeks in China I'd mostly remember to put my used toilet paper into the nearby basket rather than down the pan as the sewerage system requires, but there's one aspect of some of China's public toilets that I don't think want to ever get familiar with and that's what I'd call 'pig-sty toilets'.
If you imagine your average public sit-down toilet cubicles and then chop off the top half of the cubical so it's now about 130cms high, then you'll have a decent idea.
I'd first encountered them in the communal bathroom in the cheap hotel I stayed in in Urumqi and it certainly felt weird and exposed to walk into the cubical and still feel very much in the public space, but when you squat it does become somewhat private. There's no need for locks on the door of your cubicle as people can see it's occupied because they can see at least the crown of your head over the cubicle walls!
My most memorable encounter with this type of arrangement was while out drinking with a local on the tourist-trap hutong Nanluogoxiang (nan luogo shiang)

We were in a small trendy bar and I needed to use the toilet. The friendly staff indicated that the bar didn't have its own facilities, so I'd have to go a short distance down the side street to the public conveniences. Of course the place smelled bad, as they often do, but it was the sights, not the smells that were more unwelcome! It was a pig-sty setup with no urinal, so I had to make my way past the occupied sties to a free one at the end. The moment was so memorable because non of the sties had doors! So my walk was past a gallery of plump Chinese men, in various states of undress, sweating in the stuffy summer evening air, who stared at me passing by, their attention momentarily pulled away from their various activities – most of them were playing with their phones, at least one was playing on a PSP and one was chatting on the telephone like it was the most natural thing in the world!
I was glad I only needed a wee and could beat a hasty retreat!
Fortunately, the toilets in hostels are in full, private cubicles, so I never needed to become too well acquainted with such impersonal arrangements.