Lavatories

厕所 cèsuǒ

Perhaps the only reason to welcome the rapid growth of American fast food outlets in Běijīng is the consequent increase in the number of reasonably clean lavatories. Use these, the ones in your hotel, or the ones in shiny shopping malls whenever possible — the alternatives are not pleasant. Facilities for women are marked 女 and ones for men marked 男.

There is often little problem identifying other public lavatories even at some considerable distance, as the language of the nose is international although city facilities have improved in recent times. During the Běijīng Olympics of 2008 public toilets were rather ineffectually given star gradings, and in 2012 a much-mocked edict issued limiting the number of flies to two per toilet. Carry sheets of toilet paper with you, and hand sanitizer.

In 2015 the authorities began a ‘toilet revolution’ attempting to improve the country’s image by upgrading toilets at key tourism sites. The plentiful availability of toilet paper led to organised thievery, and at the Temple of Heaven to the installation of paper dispensers connected to face scanners, which will reportedly dispense only 60cm of paper at a time, and only every nine minutes to the same face.

As absurd as this may seem, you may dream of such high-tech approaches on trips to the countryside where facilities usually consist of a row of slits in a concrete base, which may or may not be separated by waist-high walls, open to the front. You must squat, attempting neither to step in earlier near-misses nor slip into the pit below, which will contain a steaming, maggot-ridden heap of earlier deposits awaiting collection and distribution to the fields. In winter a frozen stalagmite of human faeces may poke its tip through the slit. There will often be nowhere to wash your hands, and certainly no soap even if there is running water.

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