CHINA IN MIDST OF TOILET MODERNIZATION

[Anonymous]

China in Midst of Toilet Modernization
SHANGHAI,
China
It’s an image that Shanghai’s aggressively modern leaders want
to shed: people rinsing out their chamber pots in alleys in the shadows of
ultramodern skyscrapers. The city of 20 million, standard-bearer of communist
China’s march into capitalism, is in the midst of a massive toilet
modernization. It wants anyone without a toilet at home to have a public
facility a few steps away, and offers a hot line for those who can’t find
one.

This month Shanghai hosted the World Toilet Expo and Forum in hopes
of getting advice on how to spruce up its loos. “We have observed that the state
of public toilets, especially men’s toilets, is not up to standard and poses
quite a challenge,” Hong Hao, deputy secretary general of Shanghai’s city
government, told the gathering.

Finding a toilet has traditionally been
simply a matter of following one’s nose.

Until recently, most were
unheated, open-trench affairs. Stalls were only waist-high, sometimes without
doors. Running water was rare. Toilet tissue and soap? Forget about
it.

Now Shanghai says it has one toilet every 1,000 feet, with signs in
universal symbols all over town showing the direction and distance to the
nearest.

The city has built thousands of new apartment buildings with
modern plumbing, but in many older housing districts, chamber pots are used at
night, then toted to the nearest public toilet to be emptied next
morning.

Public toilets in choice tourist locations tend to be clean and
well-maintained. Some are assigned one to five stars under a municipal rating
system based on features ranging from quality of toilet tissue to such high-tech
touches as automatic flushing. The best charge up to 50 fen (6
cents).

Showcase public toilets include one in a suburban park designed
to look, inside and out, like a grotto. Others have digital displays indicating
how long each stall has been occupied. One Japanese restaurant, Hinotori, has
goldfish aquariums beside the toilets and under the sinks.

Though the
city is promising the latest in high-tech, the exhibits at the expo were
strictly utilitarian – no fancy sprays, fans or bottom heaters.

But there
were plenty of anti-bacterial tiles, water-saving urinals, diaper-changing
tables.

“We’re showing only technology that makes sense,” said Dominique
Facon, vice president for marketing at American Standard in Shanghai, as
technicians demonstrated a toilet that easily handled 14 golf balls in one
flush.

The most unusual exhibit was a $2,300 composting unit that
inventor Andy Tung says uses as little as 100 pounds of sawdust a year to
convert waste into smell-free, safe organic fertilizer.

Tung said his
company, Shinnichi Mechanical & Electrical Equipment Co., has installed
trial versions in public washrooms in a Chinese city park, in an office building
and in a Beijing residential district.

The exhibition was sponsored by
the World Toilet Organization, which represents cleanliness groups in 17
countries and is based in famously tidy Singapore, which fines people who fail
to flush public toilets.

“Better toilets will bring more tourists,
investments, lower public health costs, and increase the economic and spiritual
well-being of the people,” the organization’s founder, Jack Sims, told the
gathering.

“Our happiness cannot be complete without a proper and
pleasant toilet environment.”

[Author]

May 17, 2005 at 10:18 AM