April 24 - Jinghong - an introduction to Chinese toilets

I had heard all about Chinese toilets but unless youre used to living in
tenement housing, there isn't much to prepare you. The worst of my
experiences came on the first day in China, in Jinghong. After eating in a
"western" style cafe, I asked to use the bathroom, figuring, like most
cafes in Asia, it would have its own toilet, even a grungy one. The owner
took me out the front door, pointed down the street and indicated there was
something in a field somewhere. Anticipating an outhouse, I followed here
directions and ended up at a public facility. This is basically a concrete
room with no roof. Along two facing walls, there were concrete platforms
about eight inches high. These were divided into "stalls" with low walls.
Even crouching down, therefore, you are in easy view of all the others using
the toilet at the same time, so anyone who's shy about taking a dump should
avoid these at all costs. In each stall, cut into the platform, was a
rectangle into which you do your business. Under this hole, is a concrete
slab tilted downwards towards a trough. The idea is that whatever you drop
through the hole will roll or slide down the slab into the trough, which
will then be flushed with water. I can only supposed the toilet's designer
didn't really grasp the laws of physics or was not aware of the consistency
of poop, and, as one would expect, not everything "rolled" or "slid"
away as it was supposed to.

Walking inside the facility, I could smell the remnants of other people's
previous visits but that was not the worst. As I neared one of the stalls, I
noticed some movement on the concrete slabs under the holes. Rats. And I
don't mean this as an interjection. I mean this in the rodent concept.
Apparently, rats enjoy feeding off of toilet remnants and under each stall
they were poking their incisors around to see what delicacies they could
uncover. As I got closer, they would scurry away, but I still didn't feel
all that comfortable about squatting down over a hole that should be renamed
the "Willard" Potty. After a brief search, I found one where the only
remnants on the slab was a bit of a brownish/yellow stain, did what I had to
do and scurried away like all the other critters in the place.

Other public facilities that I used, for instance in bus stations, were not
built in an open field, so the entire building was closed and off-limits to
animals. But the bathroom process was not much more pleasant. In those
rooms, the rectangular holes cut in the concrete platforms open onto a
trough that's only a couple of feet directly below the hole. The trough is
supposed to be flushed regularly but this does't always clean up the mess so
you're basically going on other people's residue. I am now adept at holding
my nose and closing my eyes for as long as it takes to get my business done.