Monday, April 25, 2011

The Toilet Tour of China


Background: when China made a bid for the Olympics the International Olympic Committee said, yes, if you fix up your toilet situaiton. They added a few Western-style toilets here and there and gave the toilets a rating system, one-to-four stars.

The more the stars, the better the toilet, supposedly. Although, you are hard-pressed to find toilet paper in any of the bathrooms.
This is a four-star toilet, so you can imagine they go down from here!

This is a one-star on the Great Wall of China, let's just say--gross.

This one I would give a two to, but the outside was pretty!

The ancient toilet in the Forbidden City, Bejing. The toilet for emperors!

The bathrooms in the hotels were funny too - they all had see through walls that luckily, we found a switch to lower a curtian over. They also don't throw away their toilet paper - they leave the paper in open waste baskets next to the toilets, so they stink! You can smell a toilet from a mile away.

8 comments:

Missy said...

China? Man! Wherewill you go next? Love it! Love the rating system.

WalkConkies said...

Ha ha. I wonder how my toilets would rate :). I still remember when we were playing a game forever ago and somehow you came up with the most creative comment ever: "bathrooms are really nice this time of year!" We about died laughing. I'm thinking it was Balderdash - one of our favorites, but I don't know how that would have worked. Hee hee. I hope you survived China's bathrooms this time of year :).

Unknown said...

That's funny Heidi, it was probably either Balderdash or maybe it was pshychiatrist?

Missy said...

You had me at "toilet tour", hahaha. One for the brochures, I'm sure! ;)

Bare Buchanan said...

I am so excited to have stumbed on your post about Toilets in China! I am an avid traveler, but I've never aspired to visit China, so I know very little about it. I value this wonderful random bundle of facts about some thing so simple as a toilet. The unexpected differances that can mean so much! Gosh I love getting out of the USA.

the view from here: said...

hahaha i laughed when i read this post. the "toilet tour" - you would!! haha... and i thought some of the toilets in italy were bad.... doesnt even compare to china!

MeghannB said...

laughing so hard

Michelle said...

I'm having flashbacks to Romania. They had the same sort of hole-in-the-ground that was "fancied" up and called a toilet. I don't understand how that's supposed to help us girls?