Dehydration Nation, or a Travel’s Guide to Going in China

*The following is an email I wrote in May while visiting my friend Lee who had been teaching English to elementary school students in Wuhan China for the school year.

Well, I thought I wasn’t going to write about this, but I’ve concluded that you can’t really understand this trip to China if you don’t know about the toilet situation in China. Think of everything you know about toilets and now forget it all. Let’s get this out of the way first: toilet seats-they don’t have them. My friend Lee (whose apartment I was staying at) actually had one until it shattered under my ass the second day of using it. Who knew toilet seats could shatter so easily? I guess they don’t expect people to actually use them much so they aren’t very durable. The shattering of the seat led to the other problem we’re still arguing about. Just what happened, I can’t be sure, but Lee thinks I must have knocked some of the shattered toilet seat bits into the toilet which then clogged the toilet. I think the problem is that in every public restroom I’ve been in they have signs that say “don’t put the toilet paper in the toilet”. Um, isn’t that where it goes? Isn’t that why it’s called toilet paper? I’ve probably been clogging toilets across China just because I can’t handle dropping the TP in the garbage can that may or may not be in the stall instead of in the toilet where I think it belongs. Once we clogged Lee’s toilet I checked down the hallway in the empty half finished apartments for a flushing toilet (Lee’s apartment is in the top of an elementary school building so it is mostly deserted at night). None have seats of course since Lee has stolen them after he breaks each successive one. But four down has been flushing so it’s our makeshift outhouse. The door doesn’t latch and a thick layer of dust and dried bugs coat most everything. The school did send someone to plunge our toilet. There was a lot of banging and confused looks and then the man said “fixed” as he trotted out of the apartment tracking toilet water all over the entry way and making a swimming pool out of the bathroom floor. The teacher at school scolded us to not ”stick foreign objects in the toilets” I think she meant “foreigners shouldn’t stick anything in the toilet” since I never knew toilet paper was a foreign object for a toilet. And for all that it has stopped working again.

School bathrooms are in a category all on their own: A trough runs along the ground with only a couple drains spaced out in it with open stalls over the trough. So now you’re squatting over a channel watching other people’s excretions float by with the high probability of a teacher or an elementary student similarly squatting across the way. In the hallway i enjoy being mobbed with jubilant “hello Sarah”-s, but in the bathroom I don’t have a free hand to wave back… Is it any wonder why I’m actively courting dehydration in the 100 degree heat?

 

Public restrooms are a step up and by a “step up” I mean realistic-that-i-will-actually-use-them.  There hardly ever is toilet paper and even rarer are actual seats. They’re just holes in the ground. What’s more shocking is that I consider the presence of one or the other an occasion to dance in the bathroom.  A dance that may or may not result in my foot being squeegeed by the bathroom attendant mopping up the floor/toilets on the floor. Restaurants give out packs of tissues instead of the hassle of having separate napkins, paper towels, tissues or toilet paper anywhere on the premise. Which is great since tissues when wet normally dissolve and leave little bits of paper on whatever you choose to be wiping with them (case in point I had tissue stuck to my lip after lunch today). I brought these little travel bathroom packs that have TP, a hand wipe and a sanitary toilet cover; I always laugh at the seat cover since it’s useless without a seat.

 

I never before questioned the legitimacy of letting the person waiting in line in the bathroom go first. But here people just walk in and pick a door and jostle their way into an open one, men and women alike since many bathrooms are co-ed. (Though not all as Lee’s sister Katy discovered the hard way after getting strange looks using the pit in the men’s room next to the urinal.) I got passed over many times as I politely waited my turn until I realized it was never going to come. So yes, now I fight for my right to balance and squat over a pit while holding my clothing away from where the last person missed. I was so proud of myself the first time I went, but my pride was short lived as the next bathroom had a door that wouldn’t shut so I had to try to hold the door while balancing and holding my clothes at the same time. I don’t know how to say “can you hold the door while I go?”  And I have a feeling that any person I asked would just take the stall from me.

 

People’s houses are hit or miss as well. We went to someone’s apartment where they had a pit in their house. Which I would have considered trying until I realized that floor length frosted glass windows are essentially see through when lit from behind. One step at a time here-I’m just not yet ready to pee while on display.