Peeing in China, Step 1: Make Sure the Urinal Drain Is Connected

Fear not. The title of this post notwithstanding, I'm not about to subject you to an entire series of informational posts about going to the bathroom in China. However, I do have one amusing excretory story that demands to be told, a cautionary tale about potentially problematic assumptions.

Even with all my exposure to the surreality of contemporary
China, this banner befuddles me.
(photo by Edward Russell)

In November 2009, as we were traveling on the highways of China's Yunnan Province from Dali to Lijiang, a popular and gorgeous tourist destination nestled deep in the mountains, we had to stop to pay a toll. Having already waited for a while to take a bathroom break, I decided to run across the road to a gas station with a large bathroom that, while not gleamingly immaculate, looked rather innocuous. At this point, I am reminded of the British corollary to the idiom "Never judge a book by its cover": "One ought not evaluate a water closet by its façade."

However, I think you CAN judge THIS W.C. by its façade.
Don't expect attendants handing out towels.
(photo by Jacqueline)

As I approached, I noticed a sign requesting that people using the bathroom pay a small fee, but there were no attendants to collect the fee. Although I waved at the distant service station workers, they didn't acknowledge my presence—in retrospect, a clear portent of my imminent urinary debacle. Now I see that, like a condemned apartment building in a ghetto, the bathroom had been disowned and abandoned. It was beyond saving, so they had simply decided to leave hapless tourists to fend for themselves.

Convenient AND classy!
(photo by "istolethetv")

Somewhat hesitantly, I entered the bathroom and chose a urinal (according to universal and time-honored urinal selection principles understood by men), relieved to relieve myself at last. I unzipped, closed my eyes contentedly, and began my business, when a disturbing noise reached my ears: the sound of water splashing on the floor. Momentarily, I was confused: What could be making that sound? I thought. Then I opened my eyes, looked down, and was greeted by one of the most profoundly disturbing sights I have ever seen: my pee was flowing straight from the drain in the urinal down onto the floor. And it was too late to stop peeing. My beleaguered, pissed-off bladder had had enough and was determined to empty itself.

What dirty trick of destiny was this? In that first moment of sheer existential shock, I felt betrayed by the gods. Why?!! Why is this happening to ME, O Lord of the Porcelain?!! Far better to have made me pee behind the bushes on the side of the road than to have fooled me into using what I reasonably assumed was a regular urinal, only to pull the proverbial rug out from under me after it was too late.

No blood? Now that's what I call a VAST deferens.
(photo by Bo, terrible pun by Brantley)

For all I know, the urinal was a trap the gas station workers had set up for just this purpose, and somewhere on China's Interwebs there is viral video footage, with millions of hits, of a foolish foreign devil hilariously panicking in a remote service station bathroom. Somehow I don't see the government bothering to censor that kind of thing.

A waterless urinal: Sustainable development
is wise but smelly.
(photo by Sustainable Sanitation)

At any rate, back to the story—for a few moments I gawked, mouth wide open, unable to process what I was seeing or decide how to handle such an inconceivable conundrum. You will point out, naturally, that in spite of my inability to recant my stream ("No no no, wait, please, I take that back!"), I should have simply moved over to another urinal since I was making a mess anyway. Perhaps a suave, composed man would have realized this and coolly sidled over without skipping a beat. But I am not such a man. In that moment of excretory panic, befuddled by a situation I had never faced before nor could have even imagined facing, my feeble brain failed me—much like the tragic urinal itself, my sensory organs, frontal lobe, and muscles had become completely disconnected. I just stood there, a helpless insect about to drown in a sink, and watched the puddle become a pool and then a lake as I stepped back farther and farther and aimed higher and higher, still frantically trying to keep my stream shooting pointlessly into the urinal. I was paralyzed by a lifetime of conditioning that had taught me to keep my aim true at all costs.

Instructions for the ignorant or lazy: "A step
up closer helps keep it cleaner."
(photo by Jordan Wooley)

Finally, I could retreat no farther. As my feet were about to be enveloped by an amoeba of my own waste, desperation overpowered conditioning, and I made a heroic horizontal lunge to the safety of a distant urinal. I have often wondered what emotional trauma would have ensued if that urinal, too, had been disconnected, but fortunately fate was finished flustering me this day—it was fully functional, and I finished my business in relative peace as I cast wary sidelong glances at the still-expanding lake I had left behind. Relieved on multiple levels, I heaved the enormous sigh of one who has narrowly avoided disaster, then zipped up and exited the bathroom.

This is what happens when you hand a dictionary, or Google
Translate, to the utterly undiscriminating. It actually says,
"Please flush after excreting." Not a single word right.
(photo by Kyle Taylor)

As I stopped to wash my hands at the sink outside, I snorted at the unintentional irony of the sign asking for a 1 yuan payment for use of the bathroom. You're lucky I don't demand compensation from YOU, I thought. And, of course, I shot a dirty look and a stream of bilingual invective in the direction of the service station as I walked away. But by the time I got back to our van, the momentary trauma of the experience, safely isolated in my emotional rear-view mirror, was already transforming into the hilarious tale with which I regaled the members of our group. The fact that their laughs came at my expense didn't matter, since I was laughing, too. As our laughter died down, I thought, Only in China and had another moment of appreciation for the wealth of unique experiences I've had in China over the years.

The original Chinese is a play on words suggesting that
the pee-er stand close to the urinal, presumably for the
dual purpose of not missing the toilet and making sure
it flushes. Progress doesn't always take the form of
skyscrapers and technology patents, you know.
(photo by Cory Doctorow)

Despite this inauspicious beginning, our trip to Lijiang turned out to be an amazing experience. Obligatory corporate plug: I highly recommend taking our Yunnan Highlands Local Culture 11-Day Tour to see it for yourself. Those eleven days are guaranteed to be some of the most memorable days of your life—not because of Yunnan's wayward washrooms, but because it is indisputably one of the most beautiful places in the world. For proof, check out the photos on our site and our YouTube videos.

This is the kind of thing you're missing if you don't visit Yunnan.
Come on now, do the smart thing.
(photo by CIT)

China’s Drinking Culture: Tales of Inebriation and Regret (Part 1 of a Continuing Series)

As a Chinese language major in college, one of my initial misconceptions about daily life for the typical Chinese concerned drinking and partying: Though I had forced down some Chinese liquor on one or two occasions before going to Taiwan for a study abroad program, I still thought of the "Chinese personality" as rather sober and strait-laced. Boy, was I wrong. It's foolish to think in absolutes about any culture, especially one as rich and varied as China's, and I quickly discovered the party animal side of Chinese culture. For many Chinese, it's customary to make frequent toasts at meals, play drinking games, have drinking competitions, and drink prodigiously while engaging in activities like karaoke. If you're a foreigner, they may take it easier on you, or they may be eager to take you down. And you may get your liver handed to you.

Although there are a lot of drinking stories I could tell, one of the first that comes to mind is from a trip to Jiangxi Province with a couple of my wife's friends from Shanghai. Having seen them drink just about every experienced drinker they've encountered into a stupor, I now know not to provoke them. But in my first experiences with them, I was like a mischievous child poking a cute, furry wolverine with a stick. Needless to say, I got clawed, chewed up, and spit back out.

On that particular occasion, the drinking began on a red-eye train trip from Shanghai to Nanchang. Our friends brought a bottle of Chinese liquor (白酒, or "báijiǔ") with them, but once the drinking began after most of the passengers had gone to sleep, that bottle lasted all of a few minutes. We then relocated to the area at the end of the car, as far away from any sleeping passengers as possible, and proceeded to play drinking games while sitting on the floor. As a tenderfoot playing against sly and savvy veterans, I managed to lose just about every round and had to endure constant imbibing just to get the small satisfaction of occasionally making them take a swig. And naturally, as I got drunker, I got worse and worse at these games. It was the most vicious of vicious circles. Over the course of the night's festivities, we drank every last can or bottle of alcohol available on the entire train...and it was a BIG train with a LOT of people. I remember taking a long stumble through I don't know how many cars and past I don't know how many startled passengers (I was the lone white guy on a train full of hundreds of locals, and I was appearing out of nowhere) to the front of the train, where there was rumored to be more beer, and being elated to find that they did indeed have a few more cans. In the end, I collapsed on my bunk and passed out while my still bright-eyed companions outdrank some random passenger who had foolishly decided to join us—and who, we found out later, missed his stop while sprawled out unconscious.

The wolverines with their hapless victim

And that was only the beginning. After three or four hours of sleep for me, and even less for my friends, we got off the train and immediately began our sightseeing—and then the drinking continued at lunch with another bottle of baijiu. For them, there was nothing demoralizing or even unusual about this. For me, however, it was starting to become intimidatingly clear how much pain the next few days held in store for me.

白酒: Causing pain and regret for thousands of years
(photo by Chen Zhao)

So the moral of this post is that depending on the company you keep while in China, be prepared for your liver to take a serious beating. If mine could talk, it would go off on me like Christian Bale on a wayward dolly grip* (full transcript of Bale's rant here) for the abuse I've dealt out to it during my stays in China. On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of fun and some good stories in return. Just be careful, folks, because you may end up biting off more than you can chew. And watch out for those Shanghai women! They may be sophisticated and well-dressed (the photos above don't do these two justice), but they can probably drink you under the table too.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Obligatory corporate plug: If you, too, would like to get hammered in China and then regret it afterward (but not too much, because at least you'll have a good story to tell), check out our tours, which will allow you to damage your liver in a wide variety of beautiful and fascinating settings. (My personal recommendation for the experienced international inebriate: Lijiang.) Take plenty of photos, in case you can't remember anything afterward—no refunds will be given to travelers with liquor-induced amnesia.

* Ok, apparently it was the director of photography, but "dolly grip" is funnier.