Public Toilets

So it's about time that we discuss relieving oneself in China. There are two styles of toilets. The one the Chinese are most familiar with is the squat toilet. This can exist in many forms. There is the literal hole in the ground, the trough (women have trough toilets too) and the porcelain one. (Here is a link to Wikipedia in case you want to see the different styles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet) The second style of toilet is the regular sitting toilet that most Western countries are familiar with. Now you cannot throw your toilet paper in the toilet, you must throw it into the little trash can next to the toilet - that is if you're lucky enough to have toilet paper in your stall. Most of the time you need to bring it with you. Also, very rarely will there be soap or towels at the sink for after you have finished. The miracles of hand sanitizer.

Now it is perfectly acceptable to relieve oneself wherever you happen to be. For instance, we have seen cars and tuk tuks driving down the street and then pull over. The driver or passenger gets out of the car, walks into the bushes and about a minute or so later comes back out and gets back into the car. We have also seen a little girl come running out of her house, pull down her pants and just pee all over the sidewalk. While sitting in a cafe along one of the canals, a 5 year old little boy came, pulled down his pants and then urinated into the canal. Unfortunately about 10 minutes later a woman came and washed her clothes in the canal! This past weekend our friends went to Taihu lake to eat the Hairy Crab. After they had finished lunch and were taking a tour of the island, they saw the wait staff cleaning the dishes and fresh produce for the next meal in the lake. The very same lake that the hole in the ground toilet empties directly into! Mmmm, yummy!

I now need to pause and take a moment to describe the split-bottom pant to you. These are for babies through potty-training age. Babies don't wear diapers here. I don't know why. I like this only in that there aren't a bunch of diapers going to sit in a landfill forever, plus the kids get potty-trained much faster. I don't like this because babies are constantly exposed and quite frankly I don't need to see that (Aaron agrees). Split bottom pants are just that, split. Instead of a seam it is just wide open so if the kid needs to relieve itself you just pull its legs into a squat position and voila. So with this bit of knowledge, I must tell you about our favourite public excrement experience. We're at the brand new mall. It's rather upscale with a variety of Western stores like H&M, Zara, Quicksilver, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and a variety of others I don't remember. We see this woman holding her 18 month old over the trash can on the second floor at the bottom of the escalator. We start discussing - What is she doing? She's been standing there for like 5 minutes. And then it dawns on us - her child is taking a dump in the trash can in the middle of the mall!!!!!!

Ah China.

So at this point, when we step into our elevator and there's a puddle on the floor we avoid it. If it isn't raining and the concrete is wet, we walk around it. If it smells like someone's just taken a dump, they probably have. At least it's rather liberating - need to go to the bathroom and can't find one? No problem, just stand behind this tree, everyone else does!

P.S. When you come to our house you are required to take your shoes off and leave them by the front door!