My first experience in Chinese bathrooms was on our preview trip here in the Beijing airport. After being up for 24 hours, and getting off my flight I decided I had time to swing by the bathroom before boarding our last one hour flight to our town of Dalian. So I made my way innocently to the ladies room, which was labeled clearly enough for me to understand which room to go in. As I quickly swung the stall door open I was stopped in my tracks. The first thought that popped into my mind was "aw, HELL no!" Notice the picture on the outside of the stall of the feet on each side of the standard Chinese style squatter toilet? I'm not sure at that point if I wanted to cry, wait until our next flight, or what. But I was beginning to question what this life in China would be like and wondering if choosing to come here rather than stay home was going to be as fun as I had hoped. So as not to make any hasty moves, I stepped back and decided to see what was behind door number 2. As I stepped to the next stall door I saw a picture on the door of a western style toilet.
Ah, this is looking promising. Sure enough, as I pushed the door open in optimistic caution I was met with a "normal" toilet. Ah, much better! So now I knew. Check behind the stall door until you find the style toilet you prefer. Cool! I get how it works here.... or so I thought....Next airport. More bathroom surprises in store. I find the western style toilet and I'm in business now. Until I "finish". Uhhhh, where's the toilet paper. Great! NOW I find out we carry some with us in our purse - just in case. Yeah, where was THIS in the relo info they gave us? As I'm washing my hands I proceed to the paper towel dispenser. As I peel off some paper I think to myself "gee, this is a lot like.... toilet paper.... wait a second... this IS toilet paper!" o.k., so you get the toilet paper out by the sink BEFORE you go into the stall.
So this begs the question. How do you know how much you're going to need before you go in there? And what if you get in there and find out you needed more than you thought you were going to need? Being the eternal optimist, at this point I'm still not allowing myself to go into the "this place sucks" mode and I'm still trying to view this experience as all part of the adventure, but I must admit, my sense of humor is being tested. I'm thinking to myself - "so it happened to me once, but now I know how it works here, so I'm all set now. I know how it works here"..... until the next step on the learning curve.It could have been worse. One of our female friends here had to do the health check for living here and they had her pee in a cup. A less than enjoyable experience in a "normal" bathroom, but even more fun in China. The only toilet was the "squatter style", and the floor was, let's just say, not clean. So after trying to negotiate aiming for the cup, the pants not touching the floor any more than necessary on the less than clean floor, and the squatting (remember, we don't have the squatting muscles developed the way people who have lived here their entire lives have) she came out with her sense of humor pushed to the limits. THEN she was met with no place to wash her hands! She came out screaming "where's the Purell!?" To hear her husband tell the story (in his southern accent), she was NOT a happy camper. Ironically, her experience was much like..... camping! It reminds me of that famous saying "one day we will look back on this and laugh". So far her husband is doing more of the laughing than she is.
One of the wives here was telling me that she will only go to 3 areas of town - near 2 hotels she is familiar with and one store she is familiar with where she knows there are clean western style bathrooms. o.k., I'm not THAT bad, but I can't lie. I'm pretty adventurous, but I'd rather SCUBA dive in waters where there might be sharks (and have) than brave the Chinese style bathroom. That's one thing I think I could leave China without experiencing and feel I got my money's worth.
3 comments:
Wait until you see the ones like they have in Italy - their version of roadside conveniences; yep, troughs with waist high walls to protect you from exposure (or is that exposing!)..... Glad you're having fun with the bathroom experience.
That is very funny! LOL Is Rob having a similar experience?
It's kind of the same as camping. No "issues" for guys with the bathroom. I will add that tearing the toilet paper is like tearing crepe paper. It kind of stretches a lot before it actually tears. And a roll lasts about 2 days. That really sucks if you think about the fact that most people don't have cars and have to take public transportation. You see a lot of people carrying packs of TP down the street.
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