Full of Crap

While living in China I thought that overtime I would get accustomed to all the different cultural aspects of living here. After living here for over a year there are things that I am used to such as the clothes, attitudes, and high-pressure salespeople but one thing I am not used to are squat toilets. 
If you want to learn about using a squat toilet then Monkey Abroad has a great video. There is even more to this than I realized and I have a lot of emotions about it as a foreigner here.

First, most bathrooms in China do not have toilet paper or soap available. This includes more public places like malls and parks and privately owned places like restaurants. I made myself a "bathroom bag" which is a zip-lock bag that has tissues and hand sanitizer. If you ever move to China, bring this with you at ALL TIMES. Even airports in China don't always have soap and t.p. I find it intensely disgusting and every time I use a bathroom here I always think about how dirty the doors, chairs, and elevator buttons are outside of those bathrooms. This is also why I only eat street food that have been prepared with tools and not with hands.

Second, not everyone can "aim" correctly. Recall any rest area bathroom in the USA. Got it pictured? It's gross right? That is cleanliness level of every bathroom in China. The walls but mostly the floors are covered in you know what. Children and elderly people have the hardest time using squat toilets and only recently has there been an initiative to place western toilets in bathrooms as the solution to the problem. Usually the western toilet is labeled as the toilet to use if you have a disability and the others are still squat toilets. Sadly, children, the elderly, and even the drunk will fall in the squat toilet once in a while. 

Please lord do not let that happen to me.

This is gross for me on two levels. One, the bottom of my shoes are that much more gross. I do have a hypothesis that is why taking your shoes off while in a house got started. Two, if you have to bring a suitcase with you into the bathroom then you are making the wheels or bottom of those bags so much more gross. 

Third, toilet paper can't be flushed but instead has to be thrown away. That means the bathrooms smell *a certain way* all the time.  

Fourth, China doesn't have indoor plumbing everywhere. I don't mean just at sports events where you have to use a port-a-potty I am talking businesses, parks, and rest areas. Only on my Huangshan trip did I find out about this. If there isn't a way to flush down the waste that means that the bathrooms are done in a trough style. 

The trough toilet AKA trench toilet looks like this. When you go to a trough bathroom, the outside looks normal because there are still stalls. When you open the stall and look down then you see this steel monstrosity. You may notice that there is one hole for the entire bathroom. 
Think about that for a second and what that means.
Yes, while you do your "business" you can unfortunately see everyone else's sliding past you. 
I don't know how often the cleaning staff comes in but I do know they grab buckets of water and pour it down the ends to get everything in the drain. 
I am not saying that many Chinese people are used to this. These trough bathrooms really aren't that common, the Huangshan to Jiaxing rest area was my first time seeing one but it was harrowing.

Now, it's story time. I mentioned in my Huangshan blog post that I had a crazy experience in the rest areas. Well, here it goes. 
The group I was with stopped at a rest area to get drinks and snacks and use the bathrooms. When I headed to the bathrooms I was warned that they were very unclean and I thought, "You mean the normal unclean bathroom. I'm used to it!" 
Spoiler: I was not. 
The first bathroom stall was being used, the second didn't have a door, and the third while having a door had something far worse. Door number three had a pile of crap about shin high on my leg. 

Tommy Boy. 1995

Naturally I went to door two but just then a woman walked in, she strolled to door three made a quick turn around, and then while I was ruffling through my purse for my bathroom bag (hadn't started anything) she locked eyes with me. She didn't turn away. She didn't feel shy or ashamed about locking eyes with a stranger who was about to get their business started. It was like locking eyes with the devil asking me with her look, "Do you dare go while I stare into your soul?" There was no turning around and facing the other way because of the drain situation of the squat toilet. Just then a child with her mom came into the bathroom crying over and over how bad she had to go. They rushed to door three, saw the mess, and then the child turned towards me screaming and crying. 
Having and audience of three with one yelling at me to hurry up was too much. I got out of there and decided to wait. 

The second rest area was the trough bathroom. I didn't realize it was a trough bathroom at first until I opened the door. The girls in line behind me literally gasped when we all saw the steel trough before us. They began debating if they really had to go that bad. Since this was my second attempt and I had waited approximately 20 minutes to get to this bathroom I really didn't have much choice. When I used this bathroom I stared at the ceiling the entire time and had to hold myself back from gagging. Looking down was way too much for my stomach to handle. 

I pray to the good Lord above that I will never have an experience like that again. I doubt it will as this was my by far the worst experience I had but please PLEASE don't let this happen again to me.