User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in China

Public toilets in China include a mix of sit and squat toilets. Toilet paper is often not provided. Levels of cleanliness can vary. A lot of building work on public toilets started in the 2000s as a result of internal immigration and the 2008 Olympic Games.

Public toilets
The local word for toilet is cèsuo. Men's toilets are called nán while women's toilets are called nü.

WaterAid ranked the country as one of the ten worst in the world in 2016 for urban access to safe and private toilets. WaterAid ranked China the second worst country in the world for having the most urban-dwellers living without access to a safe, private toilet. Between 2000 and 2016, 329 million people moved from rural areas of China to urban areas. China tried to address this by trying to increase the number of public toilets in urban areas.

There are regional differences in China, regarding a preference for a sit versus a squat toilet. Most modern hotels have Western-style toilets. Public toilets used by migrant workers were often squat toilets. One of the most frequent kind of public toilets is a row of squat toilets with no partitions or very low partitions. Most public toilets in Shanghai are squat toilets, though most facilities offer one or two Western style sit toilets.

Many people in China clean themselves with water after defecating. Using toilet paper is also very common. In China, it is not customary for public toilets to have toilet paper. People who want to use it are expected to bring their own.

Public toilets, especially those in bus stations, train stations and on trains, are often very unclean. Many public toilets in Shanghai have a cleaning attendant. Hotels often provide plastic slippers for guests to use in their in room bathroom. Posters were sometimes hung in public toilets used by migrant workers advertising things like treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

According to Graham Askey, author of Toilets of the Wild Frontier, a public toilet in China that had baths filled with urine and poop was one of the worst in the world. Lifestyle magazine Lifestyle.INQ ranked Shanghai as having the second cleanest bathrooms in the world in 2019.

History
During the Han Dynasty period, which lasted from 206 BCE to 220 CE, both squat and sitting toilets were popular. Toilet paper first began to be used in China in the mid-800s.

The Communist Party banned all public toilets in the 1960s after having nationalized them in the 1950s. Over a million people in Shanghai still lacked access to basic sanitation in their home in the 1980s. A public toilet revolution began in China starting in 1995.

Traditional homes in Beijing in the 2000s still lacked indoor plumbing. As a result, most of the locals used public toilets. Most of these ere very old, lacked drainage and had problems with flies. For much of the 2000s, public toilets in Beijing had a reputation among tourists as being of lower quality compared to other international destinations.

A 350 square meter public toilet facility was built on the east side of Tiananmen Square in 2003. The public toilets included ones with access for people with disabilities, and for parents who needed to use public facilities to care for their babies.

In the lead up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, public toilets in China had to deal with problems of broken toilet seats as people broke them by standing on them. This continued even after the Games. Attempts to address this issue were done by improving signage and explaining how to use the types of toilets in that restroom facilities. In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the city built dozens of new public toilets. They also renovated many of their existing toilets to bring them up to a more modern standard. The Games organizers promised to build or renovate 400 public toilets a year starting in 2003 until the start of the Summer Olympics. The government invested over USD$29 million to fixing public toilets ahead of the Games.

The Beijing city government implemented new public toilet standards in 2012, saying no more than two flies could be in a public toilet. If there were more, they were not clean enough.

Over 68,000 public toilets were constructed between 2015 to 2017 in China. China has spent USD$3 billion upgrading 68,000 public  toilets between 2015 and 2018 in support of their tourism industry.

Chonqing had a toilet complex in 2017 that was over four stories with 30,000 square feet and containing 1,000 toilets including a large number of urinals in different shapes like shoes, the Virgin Mary, crocodiles and curvaceous women.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in China
Public toilet access around the world is most acute in the Global South, with around 3.6 billion people, 40% of the world's total population, lacking access to any toilet facilities. 2.3 people in the the Global South do not have toilet facilities in their residence. Despite the fact that the United Nation made a declaration in 2010 that clean water and sanitation is a human right, little has been done in many places towards addressing this on a wider level.