Zhongshan Park's Toilets - Bum's row: Clean toilets can be a place to  hang.

By Kath Naday

The WTO is getting excited about sanitation. No, not that WTO, rather the World Toilet Organization, a non-profit organization founded in 2001 in Singapore by former entrepreneur Jack Sim. Friday, November 19, is the anniversary of the founding of the other WTO, and is marked by the annual celebration of all things toilet on World Toilet Day (WTD). The WTO is calling for people to get out and participate in The Big Squat, a worldwide event where people squat (and take photos of themselves doing it) for a minute, to raise money for the 40 percent of people on the planet who in 2010, still have no access to sanitation. It's the grittier end of the sanitation field - despite being something that most of us do on average six times a day, 2,200 times a year, totaling three years of our lives, talking toilets is still a taboo in many parts of the world - many still prefer to powder their nose (equally, that could mean a snort of something these days) or going to the restroom, the comfort station or the little girls/boys room.

Providing clean water gets all the glitz and glamour - including Hollywood stars. Matt Damon co-founded Water.org with Gary White aiming to draw attention to unsafe or inadequate water supplies. Sim aims to tackle the problem not at the source, but rather from the end product, and wants to dial down the embarrassment factor. In an interview in India prior to the recent Commonwealth Games, Sim said, "there is a need to not only train sanitation workers, but also to make their job more respectable by eliminating the social stigma associated with it." Their status needs to be upgraded from the status of unskilled workers to technicians, although anyone who's needed an emergency plumber in the UK in the last few years would have needed to max out their credit cards to pay for the help.

Flushed with success

Speaking on November 1 at the annual World Toilet Summit in Philadelphia, US, Sim said that despite the gloomy statistics he believes that toilets are going to be good business - many of the people who don't have toilets could afford them, but prefer to spend spare cash on mobile phones and TVs instead. That's something China's building industry has taken to heart, according to ConstructionWeekOnline.com. Nineteen million toilets are sold every year in China, a product of the construction boom. Most toilets are not that expensive, but China's increasingly pampered rich prefer a more luxurious experience - 5 percent of toilets sold now cost between $150 and $6,000, including those fancy Japanese models that heat the seat, play music, and blow and spray your way to cleanliness.  

Not that most of us, outside the home at least, are lucky enough to have had an experience like that in Beijing. Despite having claims to have invented one of the earliest flushing toilets and toilet paper - well they did invent paper itself in 105 AD - why do we still have to put up with toilet nightmares in Beijing? It's something Ma Kangding, the man responsible for the city's more than 6,000 public toilets is trying to improve. Spokesman for the Municipal Commission of City Administration, Ma said there are also 740 toilets in parks and tourist spots, and at least one in every subway station.

In Xilou Hutong - Squatter's rights: Chew the fat while laying a cable. Photos: Guo Yingguang

Nature calls

Asked to identify the gold standard for public toilets in Beijing, he pinpoints the ones at the south gate of Zhongshan Park, near the Forbidden City. It's a great achievement; in 1993, 70 percent of Beijingers still used public toilets. Ma likes the idea of the WTD; "it's a great idea to promote sanitation and a cleaner environment for public toilets," he said. All very well, but we've all experienced getting caught short in a neighborhood with only a communal loo with no doors or paper, so what does he hope will be the future for Beijing's loos? "I'd like to provide free toilet paper and try to improve facilities, but as you know we are a developing country, and it will take time."

The star-rated toilets we see around came in after a surge to improve toilets when Beijing failed to win the 2000 Olympics. A four-star toilet should be clean, with attendants, have baby changing and disabled facilities, disposable seat covers, music, a rest area and be free of charge. They may be better than some people's houses. How about toilet manners? The only place I've ever really seen the general public lining up is at the airport. Ma thinks Chinese people are generally happy to wait in line, although getting them to make one line instead of planting themselves in front of the cubicle door might be another thing. "If nature calls urgently, people will jump the queue, but I'm sure people will understand," Ma said.

Fang Yunyu helped with this article

kathnaday@globaltimes.com.cn

To squat, or not?

It's one of the biggest nightmares for the unwary foreigner, especially tourists - desperate urge to go, but you're faced with a line of squat toilets, some open to the world. Chinese people like nothing more than a little chat over their morning toilette, but it's an alien world for us. But many doctors say that the squatting posture is much better for us - fewer impediments to the flow, as it were. The body has its own rectal U bend, and squatting will relive strain and help prevent hemorrhoids. And it takes less time, according to a study by Isreali doctor, Dov Sikorov - 51 seconds versus 130 seconds for the sitters. Presumably they weren't reading the paper. But one of the biggest reasons to practice your squatting is it's cleaner.  

Bogroll of fame: best and the worst of Beijing's loos

Best

Any good hotel has pretty nice loos these days, but for the highest pee in Beijing, head to the China World Summit Wing's Atmosphere bar.

No Name Bar in Houhai was a relief back in the days where relief was hard to come by.

Lan Club is often considered to have the best restrooms in town, although mirrored walls?

Changling Tomb, Ming Tombs. One of the first with a four-star rating, it has a lobby with a TV, a pay phone and air conditioning. And paper.

Purple Haze gets a mention for its entertaining walls.

Worst

Many of the capital's music venues have crap loos but 2 Kolegas' have to be the worst. Grungy club, yes, grungy toilets, no. It prevents women from drinking, so they should really rethink the interior decoration.

Dishonorable mentions go to Salud and many bars around Gulou including Drum and Bell. Nice bar, bad toilet.

Element Fresh makes it in for unisex toilets. Modern place, popular, only two toilets for both sexes. After a man has sprayed around, I don't want to put the seat down, thanks.

Jianwai SOHO's toilets squeak in - never any paper, but apparently cockroaches in the hand dryers.

World Toilet Day: Flushed Facts

2.6 billion people have no access to clean sanitation, 40 percent of the world's population (WHO/UNICEF)

884 million people still have no clean drinking water (Water Aid)

80 percent of sewage in developing countries is not treated before being discharged into water sources (WTO)

1.4 million children die every year because of diarrhea (WHO/UNICEF)

1 in 5 children die before their 5th birthday (WHO/UNICEF)

1.8 million people die each year because of a lack of sanitation

Five times as many die from diarrheal diseases than HIV-AIDS, malaria and measles combined (WHO/UNICEF)

22 liters of drinking water are flushed every day in three to six liter flushes (WTO)

One gram of human feces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria and 1,000 parasites. (UNICEF)                        

For more information, see www.worldtoilet.org, www.wateraid.org

Toilet Timeline

C 3,200 BC - Late-Neolithic residents of Skara Brae, Orkney Islands, Scotland had a water draining system to get rid of waste

C 3,000 BC - King Minos of Crete had toilets in the Palace of Knossos

C 2,600 BC - Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley India had latrine blocks

C 206 BC - Tomb of a King in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - 25 AD) discovered in Shangqiu county, Henan Province has what may have been world's first "flush" toilet

105 AD - Paper invented in China

589 AD - Historian Yan Zhihui (531-591) writes he doesn't want to use paper with quotations on for toilet purposes

851 AD - travelers see toilet paper in Chang'an (now Xi'an)

1393 - 720,000 sheets of toilet paper ordered for the Imperial Court in Nanjing

1596 - Sir John Harrington builds first known flush toilet for Queen Elizabeth I's palace

1775 - Alexander Cummings patents first flush toilet - adds a pool of water to stop the smell

1829 - Tremont Hotel, Boston, first hotel to have indoor toilets

1857 - First packaged toilet roll from American Joseph Gayetty - Gayetty's Medicated Paper

1861 - Thomas Crapper, a British plumber, does not invent the toilet, but designs many improvements including the floating ballcock

1879 - First toilet roll from the Scott Paper Company, UK

1942 - St. Andrews Paper Mill, UK, makes first two-ply toilet roll

2002 - Japanese show off a gold toilet, valued at $7 million