Toilets of the World 5.6: Sharing the Movement

Perhaps most shocking to the Occidental tourist is not the toilet itself, but its surroundings. Public conveniences in China are a truly eye-opening experience. Forget all about cubicles, you’re lucky if you get a low wall between you and the next fellow.

Here, the traditional approach- multiple users straddling one long sloped trench- is preferable as it presents the squatter in profile, although the area above the foot of the slope is best avoided. Individual troughs, while less offensive to the nose (when flushing properly), are full frontal. As one might expect of a (nominally) Communist country of over 1.6 billion people, notions of personal space and privacy are very different in China.

If one manages to adjust and lose some of one’s inhibitions, there can be a sense of camaraderie in sharing a meal, cramming onto a train and, yes, even squatting next to someone. Walking into a public toilet and finding that one is not alone, one feels compelled to acknowledge fellow squatters as one might acknowledge slight acquaintances- a fractional inclination of the head or raising of the eyebrows- making the whole affair much more relaxed. However, I admit that I was too embarrassed to acknowledge the Tibetan gentleman who insisted on giving theatrical grunts of satisfaction for my benefit.

It is actually when it comes to the needs of the bladder that the open-plan toilet becomes most awkward for the Western male. With urinals few and far between, one often finds oneself looming above a neighbouring squatter, rendering any partition wall defunct, and giving one the uneasy sense that if someone were to take a photo at a certain angle it would look highly incriminating. And anyone with even the slightest familiarity with the male psyche would know that squatting for a number one is quite out of the question.

Toilets of the World 5.5: Lateral Thinking

Even once one is confident of one’s positioning, there is still a very real risk of escaping the bounds of the trough when, as happens all too often in China, one’s movements become volatile. On a Western toilet, one can be confident that however lateral the blast it will result in nothing more serious than a bit of pebble-dashing above the waterline. The same cannot be said when hovering above a squatter. Once again, this could all be a matter of squatting technique, but the shallow trough leaves very little margin for error between drawing parallel with the rim and actually touching the bottom, surely a serious faux-pas if nothing else.

Toilets of the World 5.4: Foot work

Once one has figured out which way to face, yet another problem arises: where to put one’s feet. Squatters are often raised from floor level, with grooved rectangular areas flanking the trough that one can only imagine are intended for the feet. However, doubtless due to lack of squatting expertise on my part, these footholds seemed to be in the wrong place. Placing my feet squarely in their middle, my drop zone would seem to be dangerously close to the edge. Perhaps it was pure neurosis on my part- I’m just not used to making such spatial estimations.

Nevertheless, for safety’s sake, I found myself with my toes clinging to the edge of the platform, putting even more unnatural strain on my ankles and thighs. Then there is the question of grip- the grooves do little to increase the natural friction of wet ceramic; one often finds it necessary to constantly adjust one’s footing- not, as you can imagine, conducive to a smooth flow.