One of the often comments that I have seen is how absolutely terrible China is because all you need to do is go ahead and take a look at it’s bathrooms. And yes, this has been a very difficult impression to discount, because as recently as 2010, most public bathrooms in China has been absolutely horrific.
And when I mean horrific, I mean exactly that. They were totally and absolutely foul, disgusting, dirty, disease ridden death-traps filled with insects, vermin and open sewers. Horrible is putting it nicely.
Used to be.
Has been.
Not any longer.
But of course, with anything good, no one ever reports anything good about China. It’s all bad, and evil, and filthy stuff.
No one ever reports on the good.
Certainly not the United States.
Here’s a nice little video that works to dispel that illusion. Now, you all must keep in mind that pitiful toilets do still exist inside of China. You have a population that is four to five times larger than that of the United States. So it takes time to implement change. Yet, all in all, the changes inside of China are enormous and rapid. Especially when you compare it to the glacial changes inside of America.
Here’s the video.
And NO, it’s not me. This is a video blogger that travels the world and speaks better Chinese than I do. He has a vblog called JaYoeNation. He’s pretty good. LOL.
Take a spell and let it download. If it is taking too much time, you can click on THIS LINK and down load a zipped-file and watch the video directly. It’s pretty good. Please enjoy.
You have got to see the pictures and this video…
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MM,
If there WAS something quite nasty about China it WAS the toilet situation.
At Yiwu airport. Brand new. The bathrooms were smelly and atrocious. The rest of building was the same or better than any large airport in Canada.
Went to Imperial City. Not sure what I ate the night before. Had serious diarrhea. Couldn’t find a washroom and when I did, it was a disaster.
Got off train at Dongguan. Outside, not more than 200 meters away from the exit, a child was squatting on the sidewalk.
All this 2010 – 2013.
Happy to hear that things have improved!
You are absolutely correct. When I first started to come to China back in the 1990’s, the toilet scene was amazing in it’s filth, and horrid in it’s smell. This was everywhere. But over the last three decades there has been tremendous changes, and I would say that the most recent changes over the last ten years has pretty much changed the vast bulk of the toilet situation around. All public toilets have attendants, as shown in the video. With an office RIGHT THERE and cameras to identify people who are disgusting. Which will, of course, affect your social scoring. The end result is a much more civilized environment. The big key was to get everyone in the community working together and then punishing the few outliers who “wanted to do their own thing”. Sure they can be filthy and dirty, living far away and ostracized by the community. The toilet situation is much improved. As is just about everything in China. As I have said many a time before. CHINA . DOES . NOT . PLAY.
Your integrity shows by not trying to dispel reality.
The criticism of public washrooms must include a caveat about HOTEL ROOMS and their SHOWERS.
Spent over a hundred days in China over 20+ trips to China in early 2010’s. Being SuperElite on Air Canada had me upgraded on almost ever flight to First Class while paying almost always under USD$1,000 return. So I am smart cheap and have many experiences in Chinese hotels. And was fortunate to hit 6 of 7 continents before 50 and hope to step on 7th before I die.
Chinese hotels are the BOMB! Spacious and clean and everyone with King-sized beds. Now there are filthy hotels I am sure, but I always paid between USD$50-USD$100/night. Relatively, each room would have cost more than USD$300 in Western Europe, USD$250 in NYC, and over USD$150 everywhere else in Canada and the U.S. The showers were the best in the World. All showers had room for 2 and many for 3. Rain showers with incredible shower heads were included in almost all rooms. Some had water jets from the sides. Funny thing is that half were glass so you could see the rest of the room while showering (something I have never experienced outside China – maybe available in rest of southeast Asia, but I have not traveled there)! There was a shower curtain on the side facing the room, so if you had a visitor in your room and didn’t want them to see you, you could pull down.
I suggest anyone wanting to see what I am raving about just watch a few of the many Chinese quarantine videos out there. The average 14 day stay seems to be about USD$1000 which includes food! Bang for your USD, however, you better not expect to use currency there (as MM has stated repeatedly here it is almost obsolete now).
MM, question: You showed us your kit that you use to go on overnight stays. You included a toothbrush and toiletries. Have Chinese hotels gone the Rest of the World way and no longer provide these? Every hotel room I was in had complimentary combs, toothbrushes, and plenty of everything else. Many even had complimentary condoms.
Great info on the hotels, I think that I am going to write an article on this subject int he future. Thanks for the alert!
Actually, I am so used to the Hotels inside of China that I have forgotten just how shoddy the ones in the Untied States are. YOu are absolutely correct, and they all are nice. Or course, you were a foreigner so you probably stayed at the four and five star hotels, and of course they are the shit! I’ll tell you what, but you must know that I am used to sleeping all over the place in China, from five star hotels to one star hotels. So I have a pretty decent idea of what it is all about.
Most showers are glass. When I mean most, I mean 99.9999% are. I have NEVER seen a shower curtain in my life here.
As far as the kit goes, each hotel is different. Most do have toiletries. They do, as well as complementary items for your use and a few free bottles of water, a tea kettle, and free tea. Also normal are disposable slippers, bathrobes, and condom access. Also normal is a gas mask (in a red box) in case there is a fire in the hotel.
What is not normal is ice. The only time where I have seen an ice machine is in the five star western hotels. Never in the local hotels. Also a shaving kit tends to be hit or miss. I would say around 40% of the hotels don’t have them. Also missing is hand creme or lotion. This seems to be very common in the United States, but absolutely absent in China.
Now that all being said, on occasion, I have run into instances where there isn’t a toothbrush. It does happen, you know. So what I tend to do is pick up a spare brush or two and throw it in my kit just in case. I haven’t needed them for a while, but it’s better safe than sorry.
In the smaller cities, you can also get a lot of “ding dong” girl cars slid under your door. They tend to look good on the cards, but the real deal is rather hit or miss. This question will end up as an article. I promise.
I guess I used the wrong term: “shower curtain”. They are more like “shower blinds.”
Concerning “ding dong” girls.
IMO best to just go into the bar. My first experience was in a Zhuhai hotel. (Took ferry straight from Hong Kong airport). The bar folks will call somone to come talk to you if there is no one there.
However, found out the hard way that first Chinese trip that you need to be careful about the pebble trick (I believe that is what happened: someone put a stone in the door so it never fully closed and while showering someone came in and exchanged my real RMB with counterfeit RMB). First the taxi guy told me I had fake RMB (didn’t believe him since I had it exchanged in the bank the previous day) but accepted they were fake when I went for an incredible foot and back massage the next night.
Also, learned the scary way in Shanghai to never go to KTVs that are not connected to the hotels you are staying in, unless you are with a local.
If one had a “ding dong” girl (first time I heard the term), how does one pay them if currency is no longer exchanged? Or do you still need cash for stuff like that?
Actually remind me to write about this…
You pay the girls using QR scans via Ali-pay, WeChat, or in E-yuan. If she is reluctant to give you a QR to scan, you can easily pass the money to here electronically. You can exchange wechat names, and then you can either do a direct transfer, or send a few red envelopes to her. If that doesn’t work, then you can do a direct surface to surface transfer of cash. Finally, if she is associated with the hotel, you can tack her fees to your hotel bill, and the gal at the register will hand her cash or transfer via QR.
Most of the bars with the bar-girls available via ferry from HK to Shekou no longer exist. The entire area has been built up by overseas Chinese investors and is now one large sprawling mall with Western prices. Yikes!
Ding Dong girls are the girls on the colorful business cards that you see shoved under your hotel doors, or on the street. Usually if you see a trail of cards on the sidewalk, they are a “bread crumb” that you follow to a hotel lobby. You can tell that “x” marks the spot with a bunch of cards lying on the cement in front of the lobby door. There when you go in, you’ll see from three to seven girls all sitting around in the lobby looking bored and playing with their phones.
You can, of course, go up to them and chat. But more commonly is that you turn on your wechat “scan for local members” and see if any of the girls near you are broadcasting. Chances are, that they are available. so you find the gal that you want, and you connect, and send her a message. The Wechat function allows you to chat and translate at the same time. So you just say hi. Ask the amount and then you two can go up to the hotel and have some fun.
Looking forward to the “ding ding girl” card write up.
Here’s an example of Expectations vs Reality
When my late grandmother visited China back in the early 80s, the horror tales of Chinese toilets scared the living daylights out of us kids. It was a time when they were still reeling in the aftereffects of the end of cultural revolution.
My first visit (to provincial Kunming) in 1999 was pleasant, with hotel standards equivalent to a poor third world country. Next visit to Beijing and Shanghai in 2002 was even better, hotel standards equivalent to any major Asian city (like Singapore or Bangkok).
China took great pains to upgrade the living standards especially just before the 2008 summer Olympics. Had a friend who was an expatriate there during that time and all he did was sell lots and lots of Kohler toilets. He kept joking he was in the shit business 😄