Can better public toilets save China's tourism industry?

China's main appeal for foreign tourists remains its historical and cultural sites. Photo: Li Hao/GT

When photographer Tom Carter from San Francisco first traveled to China in 2004, he encountered one of the most common culture shocks experienced by expat travelers: the Chinese squat toilet.

At a KTV, he was escorted to the WC, the universal sign for lavatory. At first, he didn't know what he was looking at.

"It was just a small closet with a hole in the floor. On the wall was the now-ubiquitous painting of a topless Chinese girl holding a vase. Next to the hole was a rusty old congee can used as an ashtray," recalled Carter, who backpacked across China snapping portraits of ordinary people, later collected and published in a book titled CHINA: Portrait of a People.

Luckily, the toilet was clean.

But to do your business in one of China's public toilets can be rather unpleasant. The small, cramped space, the putrid smell, and the poor maintenance of public loos are the targets of frequent complaints from both foreign and domestic travelers.

In an effort to address the problem, Li Jinzao, chairman of the China National Tourism Administration announced at a tourism conference earlier this month that a "toilet revolution" will sweep the country, with 33,500 new restrooms being built and 25,000 being renovated.

"It will allow tourists to do their business in modernized 'three-star' toilets by 2017," said Li.

The campaign is being launched at a time when China's inbound tourism has seen numbers dwindle. Each year since the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, China has seen a decline in the number of foreign tourists, according to 2014 Annual Report on China Inbound Tourism published by the China Tourism Academy.

While figures of global international travelers have increased over this period, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the number of inbound tourists to China has steadily dropped.

Although public amenities such as toilets may affect tourists' experiences, expat travelers and industry insiders attribute political issues, air pollution, rising costs and visa and cyberspace policies as being more important factors that have contributed to the decline.

Talking toilets misses point?

According to The World Toilet Organization, sanitary toilet conditions and a greater number of public toilets at tourist attractions can help boost tourism in a country, the Xinhua News Agency reported in 2011.

While on the Internet, China's proposed "toilet revolution" has sparked debate about the merits of Western-style cisterns compared to Chinese-style squats, Carter gave a measured response.

"Westerners dislike public squat toilets because they can be malodorous and messy," he said.

But he also noted that squatting has been shown to be a healthier position for defecation than sitting, and that squat toilets had the advantages of being easier to clean and rarely having pipe troubles.

Carter was also bemused by the "toilet friendships" that can be struck up in China's public lavatories.

"Although in terms of privacy, it can be uncomfortable to have curious strangers in a communal WC striking up a conversation with the laowai," he said, "I personally recall several times some friendly fellow squatting next to me offered me a smoke and started to get chatty while I was suffering from having loose bowels. It was weird."

Carter said that he did not think China needed to install nicer toilets, but simply to install more public toilets in major cities.

"The biggest problem is that there are not enough places for one to relieve himself or herself, forcing people to pee in corners and poop in parks, which is a real blight on China's cosmopolitan cities."

British travel writer Jeremy Tredinnick, author of Xinjiang: China's Central Asia (2012) and managing editor at Odyssey Books & Maps, said the "toilet revolution" is a good thing for "middle-level package tourists."

"The top tourist attractions [in China] these days have Western toilets that are no worse than the average public toilet in the UK or US," said Tredinnick. But if people are backpacking and traveling off the beaten track, it was very different.

"For large, unfit Westerners, this might be a big problem [using the usual squat style toilets or simply a single long communal channel], but for young backpackers it should not be any problem because the expectation is that this is what they will encounter, and they are prepared for it."

More serious deterrents

Zhong Ming, vice director in business development with tourism website Youpu.cn, said that there were other, more serious problems deterring tourists from coming to China. One of them, said Zhong, was the widely-publicized problem of China's air pollution.

"In 2012 and 2013, we tracked the figures [of inbound tourists]. Whenever serious air pollution in China was reported by the media, the number of people who enquired with us [about tourism to China] would drop dramatically," said Zhong.