My Uncle Mike Spisso, one of the last of his generation at 98 if he makes it to August 1st of this year, was in China at the end of World War II. He spent some time in Tianjin the closest seaport to Beijing and says he got to the Great Wall. One of his oft-repeated stories about China concerns bathroom habits when he found himself squatting across from some women in a communal public toilet. I haven’t found any communal public toilets here, everything is clearly marked with male and female silhouettes, but squatting is still the dominant form for doing one’s business here and squatting is something these folks do quite naturally.
And they can stay squatting forever it seems — waiting for the bus, eating lunch, having a smoke or playing cards………….a Chinese at rest is a squatter.
It’s not like the duckwalk squat in gym class or like squatting exercise in aerobics or kindergarten, but a full, on-your-haunches squat that seems to defy centers of balance while encouraging cramps. They Squat here a lot.
Most bathrooms require squatting unless you are in a big hotel or some other place with western influence. Porcelain inserts in the floor with ribbed sides for foot grips and a recessed bowl are the deal. For foreigners without significant camping or other field experience achieving balance in the squat while perfecting blind aim into the recesses of the elongated bowl is akin to bombing through clouds with an optical bombsight. There is a tendency to miss and a miss can bring with it unintended collateral damage.
Some combination of the WTO, western influence, affluence and bombing error seem to have combined to create a small shift in plumbing preferences, at least in parts of Xiamen and Jimei where supply houses and showrooms have what we would call modern fixtures, thrones or reading appliances. Actually it could be improvements in universal literacy that is the real factor and the Chinese need a quiet place to read. In any event, there are very modern fixtures including electronic flushers with heated seats for the especially affluent or perpetually cold.
So there is a slow migration, but most places, including places like Walmart, McDonalds and KFC retain blind bombing squatters so be prepared.
And speaking of being prepared, unless you are in a western hotel or maybe in somebody’s home, you bring your own TP. While there is no shortage of paper products I can see, there is a decided shortage of distribution of same in places where it’s most needed. Everybody carries their own in small personal kleenex like packages sold in all the stores and in attended WCs where they happen to be. Being unprepared in this category is something you do not want to contemplate and I suspect more than one westerner has yielded all or part of something valuable here and there before they got the habit of always taking along a package of paper. Why that is defies logic and reason, but it is what is is.
You’ve been warned. Squat on……………….
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