Squatty Potties

What does a normal Chinese bathroom experience entail?

• Sitting? No.
• Squatting? Yes.
• Closing the door? Sometimes. (In some public restrooms there are no stalls, just dividers. Even if there are stalls, not everyone closes them.)
• Bringing your own TP? Yes.
• Flushing your own TP? No. Toss it in the overflowing wastebasket.
• Bringing your own soap? Yes.
• Watching where you step? Yes.
  
• Enjoying sparkling clean surfaces and fragrant aromas? No.

I think bathrooms are one area in which most foreigners don't succumb to the standard of "normal" here. We like our bathrooms clean and well-stocked, and we want to be able to sit for a minute or two in privacy, doggone it! Many foreigners have a few "sweet spots" in hotels or Western restaurants around town where they can pop in for a visit to a clean, Western-style toilet. (Qufu, of course, is not over-burdened with fancy hotels or Western restaurants.) My personal tactic is just to wait until I get home.

Let me introduce you to the restroom just down the hall from my office in the English department:

Here we have our standard squatty and waste basket accompaniment. Be glad I didn't take a shot of the clogged one in the next stall. Ew.

And finally, the sink. Don't be fooled by the soap dish -- the foreign teachers put that there. You can also see the tub for the mop. There's always someone mopping, but I'm not sure it accomplishes much.

Actually, "mopping" could be a post all on its own. China is big on mopping. And that concludes the first edition of Is this normal? (Yes). Stay tuned for more culture tidbits.