Using a public bathroom in China can be unlike any other bathroom experience you’ll ever have.  You never know what you might see or how extreme the smells will be when you walk in.  Yeah, I know, US public bathrooms can be pretty wretched, too, but I believe that a good many bathrooms in China would easily win a gold medal if there was a dirty bathroom competition in the Olympics.   In one bathroom in Yi Shui, Shandong, as I squatted in one of the scarier ones I’ve seen, unknown water steadily dripped on me from high above.  I pray, even to this day, that is was just a leaky pipe connected to a second floor sink and not something more . . . vomit inducing.

In one particular bathroom that Phil visited, there a was plaque placed above the urinal.  It wanted to remind him that a cleaner bathroom was indeed possible, but he had to play his part.

I’ve never walked into a men’s bathroom in China, but Phil has told me that he is convinced that the male population in China, more so than the US, just don’t know how to aim.  And apparently, according to many of my male friends, it hard to pee in any sort of privacy in some of the smaller Chinese cities.  They’ve told me many stories of other men checking them out and commenting just how  . . . hrm . . . how to put this delicately . . . big they were.  Thankfully, that sort of story only happens in bar bathrooms after everyone has had one too many.

I don’t want to make it seem like girls don’t need some instruction, too.  Instead of plaques, we get bad English poetry.  If the boys have a bad time aiming, then the girls have issues remembering how to flush.  I guess that is why the reminder was taped to my stall wall.

Okay, well that is enough bathroom humor for today.   Just remember to aim and/or flush, and the world will be a cleaner, if not more fragrant place.