Did You Know? "East vs. West" Edition

There are many euphemisms for the excretion of bodily wastes. One of my favorites is “answering the call of nature.” It’s politely vague, yet conveys a sense of urgency in attending to a natural biological event.

In pre-historic times, I imagine that privacy and hygiene were of little concern and therefore answering the call was quick and easy. Suppose you’re out on the prairie with your fellow hunters/gatherers, and you feel the call of nature. You just take care of business right then and there – the others don’t care because they do it too. The private restroom had not yet been invented. And these acts (or the body parts used to perform them) had not yet been labeled as taboo.

Fast forward several thousand years. In this day and age, “civilized” sensibilities have pushed privacy and cleanliness to the forefront of concerns related to excrement.

In the U.S., you are likely to find a restroom in nearly every shop, restaurant, or other facility that is open to the public. If space allows for more than one room, they are likely to be segregated by gender – one room for males, one for females. If there is but one shared unisex restroom, it is sure to be equipped with a locking door to ensure privacy. Even inside the men’s and women’s rooms, the individual waste-collecting stations are usually separated from each other: by partitions with doors, forming a stall for each toilet; and by small dividing panels between urinals.

There is also an expectation of basic cleanliness in public restrooms in the U.S. All surfaces should be cleaned regularly to reduce germ population. Sinks should be operational, soap should be available, and some method for drying wet hands should be accessible. If only there was some sort of system in place to enforce their use.

Last but not least, public restrooms in the U.S. are expected to have an adequate supply of tissue paper for every toilet. Disposable toilet seat covers are often also available, though not strictly necessary.

Best of all, these facilities are almost always free of charge to the user.
In summary, one should feel comfortable that clean, private facilities are available almost everywhere.

That is not the case in China or Korea. Despite dense urban populations (or perhaps because building space is often at a premium), the priorities for public restrooms are very different from those in the U.S.

Usually, a less rigorous cleaning schedule is applied to most public restrooms in Asia. I’m not entirely sure why, because it’s not like they don’t have the manpower (in China, anyway). Restrooms will generally be more “grungy” than in the U.S., though restrooms that belong to Western or Western-styled establishments tend to be cleaner because they wish to appeal to a clientele they perceive as more affluent. The cleanest of the non-Western restrooms I’ve seen correspond with the mid-range of U.S. restrooms in terms of cleanliness.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference is the waste receptacles – not the trash cans (though we’ll address that in a moment), but the toilets. The standard toilet in Asia is not the Western pedestal style, but rather a squat toilet – essentially a hole in the floor.

Using a squat toilet is not something to which most Westerners are accustomed – and therefore many try to avoid them. If you have time and can seek them out, you can find Western style toilets – but spend enough time in Asia, and sooner or later you will find nature calling urgently and a squat toilet as your only option. Each person will find their own method, but the basic strategy is to have a wide stance, with your feet flat but not leaning too far forward or back. Thankfully, squat toilets are usually (but not always) partitioned in stalls so you can develop your personal strategy in private. Unlike most Western toilet partitions, squat toilet partition walls usually go down to the ground (presumably because your butt is hovering mere inches above the floor).

To date, the squat toilet is the best argument I have found against wearing pants. A skirt or kilt is ideal for squat toilet use – pants around your ankles just restrict your maneuverability and get in the way.

So now you’ve figured out how to balance and execute a bowel movement in the squat toilet. Time to clean yourself up. If you’re expecting to wipe with toilet paper, you’d better have brought some with you – most likely there isn’t any provided. It’s probably not that the supply has run out; but rather that it wasn’t supplied at all. If you failed to bring your own paper, the standard cleaning method is water (provided via bucket or hose inside the stall) and your hand. If you did bring paper, don’t throw it into the toilet! Squat toilets are not designed to handle paper and they clog easily. Instead, put the used paper into a trash bin (sometimes in each stall; sometimes in the main restroom area). In many places that have Western style toilets (which are able to handle the used paper), you are still expected to dispose of the paper in the nearby bin. Hopefully you have also brought your own soap (or other sanitizer), as the restroom is likely not equipped with any.

Now, as if dealing with the squat toilet wasn’t enough for those with Western sensibilities, the restroom itself may be used by both men and women – urinals along one wall, and toilets for both men and women on the other. This doesn’t seem to be terribly common, but I’ve been in a few like this – like the tiny unisex restroom in a bar in Seoul in which the urinal was within arm’s reach of the non-locking door. The Korean girl who opened the door that time got an eyeful (not literally).

In the U.S., if it is unclear whether a stall is in use, one usually knocks on the door and the occupant calls out something like “occupied!” In Asia, it seems that the standard response is not to call out, but rather to knock back from the inside.

Finally, there are also sometimes truly public toilets along the street. These come in two basic varieties: the attended unit and the automated unit. Both are usually fee-based. You insert money into the automated one to open the door. After you exit, the door closes and an automatic cleaning process readies the unit for the next user. The attended unit is simple enough: pay the attendant the fee to use the facility. I have not yet had the honor of using either type. Something to look forward to, I guess!