Toilet Paper: The Yardstick of Civilization
Jul 21 '01
The Bottom Line China - Eat the food, enjoy the culture, but avoid the public restrooms
Imagine if you will, the worst gas station bathroom that you have ever been in. Remember the graffiti covered walls? Remember the used condoms? Remember the fact that you wouldn’t wash your hands because touching the sink handles would be dirtier than going without washing your hands, even if you peed all over your hands?
I have been in bathrooms that make that look like the lap of luxury.
Now, first of all, I’m going to tell you that I am not a bathroom snob. I have been camping my entire life – and not just in nice, state park campgrounds with showers and running water. I have gone wilderness camping, I have been on many fishing trips as the only female, and I have probably peed outside more than most men (and you know how guys like to pee on trees, even in their own backyard). Give me some toilet paper, and I can do my business, very few complaints.
Give me the wilderness over a Chinese bathroom any day.
When you go on study abroad, there are plenty of things you worry about. How am I going to fit all of my stuff into two bags? Will I be able to communicate? Will I make any friends? Will I get along with my roommate? The entire time I spent preparing to go to China on study abroad, I read advice in guidebooks: don’t drink the water, get your shots, bring your own chopsticks or use disposable chopsticks, etc. These are all fine and dandy things to scare you out of your wits, but none of the guidebooks adequately prepared me for the bathroom situation in China. I had heard – and quickly dismissed – the fact that it was a good idea to bring your own toilet paper. I was told that Chinese bathrooms were not up to American standards, although I assumed this was in cleanliness. Fine, I thought, I can deal with dirty.
I am so incredibly stupid sometimes. It amazes me that I graduated from college.
Forget the chopsticks and the water when you go to China, worry about the fact that, unless you plan on using the toilet in your hotel all the time, you are going to see what being a resident of a Communist country is all about.
In the grand scheme of things, toilet paper is up there in importance with food and shelter. I’ve heard that even Brad Pitt carries toilet paper in the glove compartment of his car (and if it’s important to Brad Pitt, then of course it is important to everyone else). Just think about how bad it is to find yourself at a guest’s house, the toilet paper has run out and you can’t find anymore in the bathroom. Talk about a question of etiquette – what do you do in this situation?
In China, the presence of toilet paper in bathrooms is up there in importance with a boy band – it just doesn’t matter one bit. Immediately upon my arrival, all of my fellow study abroad students kept telling me to bring toilet paper with me wherever I went. Upon entering my first Chinese bathroom (a bathroom that will soon be discussed in greater detail), I realized why I was supposed to bring toilet paper with me – there wasn’t any for me to use. It was not that the bathroom had run out of this necessary item – it just wasn’t provided for the bathroom users. This is taking stinginess to a new level.
At my dormitory, we could buy toilet paper in our little dorm store. However, traveling across the rural areas of China, my friends and I were always running out of our toilet paper supplies. And we could never find any toilet paper in regular stores, leading one to ask, how does a normal Chinese person wipe their bottom? (Not with their hands, silly goose) We were ‘forced’ to eat at McDonald’s – the only restaurant (besides KFC) that provided napkins for their customers – in order to find somewhat soft paper products with which to wipe our sensitive American private parts. The habit of saving napkins for future bathroom use became so engrained in us that my friend Jennie and I, returning from China, had a seat between us on the plane. Halfway through the flight, we looked at the empty seat and saw a large pile of napkins from our drinks and suppers.
Now, seeing as how there is not toilet paper in any public Chinese bathroom that I found (with a few, very notable exceptions), you would think that perhaps all that money saved on toilet paper expense could go to nice bathrooms. Not true. Chinese bathrooms are an experience unto themselves.
My first public Chinese bathroom experience occurred on the train from Beijing to Datong (an industrial town in Northern China). I innocently wandered into the bathroom, looked at the layers of accumulated grime on the floor and said, ‘Hey, where’s the toilet?’ Of course, no one was there to understand me (both because it was a single toilet and because I said that last comment in English), so I had to figure out for myself that I was supposed to squat over the hole in the floor – a hole that conveniently emptied directly onto the tracks speeding below – and let my bladder release its contents. Having done my business – attempting not to touch a single surface in the bathroom – I returned to my seat. One of the other students asked me how my first Chinese public bathroom experience had been; I just looked at her and said, ‘That was the grossest bathroom I have ever been in.’ The experienced Chinese travelers I was with just laughed. I would later come to realize that their laughter came from knowing the relative luxury of a train bathroom, and not because I’m such a hilarious person.
Rather than detail every disgusting bathroom I used in China over the course of four months (and believe me, there were many), I’ll touch on two of the worst experiences. Before getting on a six-hour bus ride, I decided that it was a good idea to drink a liter of Coke. The one bathroom break involved a public restroom (never a good idea) without any running water, any lighting (it was dark outside), any doors, and a trough (yes, like pigs eat out of). Traveling to see the Lesser Three Gorges (a must-see for people on Yangtze River cruises), I needed to use the bathroom at one of the market stops. Not only did I have to pay for the ‘privilege’ of using the restroom, it made the bus ride bathroom break look nice. The bathroom was crowded, hot, without doors, involved another trough and lacked running water.
Avoiding bad bathrooms in China right now is difficult. Perhaps things will change before the Olympics, but until that happens, all travelers – especially female – should be aware of certain things.
First of all, use the toilet in your hotel as much as possible. It will be a regular, Western toilet and it will have a regular, Western toilet paper dispenser next to it. Outside of your hotel room, you will find very few Western toilets. Even at the major Beijing tour destinations like the Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square, bathrooms are unpleasant – to put it nicely. You will, under the best circumstances, get a hole in the ground.
If you have to use the bathroom while out, try and find a Western fast food chain (McDonald’s or KFC), buy a milk shake and use their toilet. It will be infinitely nicer than any other bathroom you will find. If you can’t find a fast food restaurant (it’s not usually too hard – there’s a KFC at the Great Wall, for goodness sakes), use a pay toilet. They will (usually) have running water, as opposed to their free counterparts. The most expensive pay toilet will run you about a dime, and be aware that you pay for what you get – not much, but more than you get without the dime.
Even in pay toilets, do not expect either a door or your own stall. It is really difficult to pee without a door while squatting over a hole in the ground. People will stare – it is not a social taboo in China – and you will not be able to get over this fact easily. Just be glad that there are separate restrooms for men and women. Most of the time, you will get a wall between you and the next person peeing, but be aware that you will often find a long trough without partitions between the users of the bathroom.
This is also not to say that there are no good toilets in China – most of the bars catering to foreigners had halfway decent bathrooms. One of my favorite clubs had one of the coolest bathrooms I have ever been in. But, in general, avoiding public bathrooms in China is an excellent idea for those of us used to toilet paper, seats and cleanliness.
[Note: Epinions doesn't seem to have a category for foreign bathrooms, as far as I could discover. I considered putting this under the 'health and safety' category of China travel, but then I decided that toilets - and toilet etiquette - are more of a custom than anything else.]
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
stroupis
|
|
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 5 members
|
|
|
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.