It keeps taking me days to put together posts so I’m going to try to get used to writing quicker by firing off a few quick ones of random odd things I see while I’m travelling in China. In that vein, the first subject is toilets. I ran into these in Japan and Korea so I guess they’re not exclusive to China but this time I actually got around to taking a picture. So the Asian toilet:

As you can see someone seems to have decided to cut all “unnecessary” parts and reduce the toilet to it’s essence, a hole in the ground. I guess it makes sense since you don’t really want to touch anything in a public toilet. It (and perhaps the lower average weight) also explains why I see a lot more people over here squatting during normal circumstances. I guess it would make you ready for camping too although there doesn’t seem to be much of that here.

Another interesting point is the garbage can next to the toilet. I had never ran into this before and had no idea it meant you were supposed to throw your toilet paper in there until I mentioned to my fiancee that they sure expected people to have a lot of garbage in the bathroom. I may have left a string of clogged toilets behind me before that. Anyway, it’s surprisingly easy to get used to although I still forget once in a while (no I don’t go fishing. it seems a couple misplaced sheets don’t hurt). I don’t think it’s a habit I’ll carry back to the US though.