Across China: China's "toilet revolution" gains steam

When Chen first saw the well-appointed building at a remote scenic area in southwest China, he mistook it for a coffee house.

"It looked quite urban and had a lot of modern amenities inside," said Chen, a tourist from Shanghai who preferred to be identified only by his family name.

Thanks to government efforts to build or upgrade toilets over the past year, clean and modern toilets are now a common sight at Foguangyan Scenic Area in Guizhou Province, where public toilets were once smelly and filled with untreated waste and toilet paper.

"It was a nightmare to go to public toilets in the past," Chen said, "but now things are changing."

China has made significant progress in cleaning up its toilets, according to a seminar held last week by the China National Tourism Administration (NTA) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

China is in the midst of a three-year "toilet revolution," which aims to build 33,000 restrooms and renovate 24,000 by 2017, according to the NTA.

By the end of last year, a total of 22,009 toilets had been built or upgraded, exceeding the year's official target by 4.67 percent.

According to the NTA, China will build or renovate 25,000 toilet facilities this year, with more than 12.5 billion yuan (1.9 billion U.S. dollars) in investment. The administration will also work to improve toilets in rural areas.

A FAREWELL TO FILTH

Toilets in the Chinese countryside have earned a nasty reputation, with some little more than ramshackle shelters surrounded by cornstalks and others just open pits next to pigsties. The ongoing "toilet revolution" is set to change all that.

China's national standard requires "sanitary" toilets in rural homes to have walls, roofs, doors and windows and to be at least two square meters in size. They may be flush toilets or dry toilets with underground storage tanks.

Provincial officials around the country said they have been urged to renovate sub-standard toilets and build new ones for farmers.

In the eastern province of Shandong, toilets in rural areas were often just roofless structures made of mud or rock.

"When children from the cities come to our village, they would rather hold it the whole time than use the pits," said Feng Jinghua, Communist Party chief of Zhouzhuang Village, Qufu City.

According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 80 percent of infectious diseases in rural China are caused by fecal contamination and unsafe drinking water. More than 30 types of infectious diseases, including diarrhea and cholera, are linked to pollution from human waste, according to the center.

In recent years, local governments have started to help farmers upgrade their toilets, which cost about 16,000 yuan each, with the government undertaking most of the burden.

So far, more than 8 million of Shandong's 15 million rural families have flush or dry toilets. The provincial government plans to earmark more than 10 billion yuan to help upgrade the toilets of about 6.5 million rural families by the end of 2018.

A similar situation can be found in the central province of Henan.

"In the past, when we went to fairs in the nearby town, we did not even know how to use the flush toilets there," said Zhang Ruiyi, a farmer in Wuliqiao Village, Jiyuan City.

In Zhang's village, all 112 families now have flush toilets, while in Jiyuan City, about 90 percent of rural areas have flush toilets, according to official statistics.

In the eastern province of Jiangsu, 94 percent of rural homes have sanitary toilets, the highest rate in the country, according to Chen Xiaojin, deputy chief of the provincial health department.

According to official figures, 75 percent of rural homes in China had flush toilets or dry toilets by the end of 2015.

"FIVE-STAR" TOILETS

The "toilet revolution" has also prompted city authorities to improve toilets in urban areas, where muddy floors, dirty squat toilets and waste paper are common.

Beijing had gone through four "toilet revolutions" in 1965, 1989, 1994 and 2002 to eliminate pit toilets and fees for toilet use as well as renovate public toilets in alleyways. As of 2015, there were 5.77 public toilets per 10,000 people in the city, higher than the national standard of four.

Another "toilet revolution" is planned for the capital over the next five years to improve sanitation and service levels.

Authorities have already announced a plan to build 100 toilets with free WiFi access this year.

The toilets, to be built in the districts of Tongzhou and Fangshan, will also have ATM machines and charging facilities for cellphones and electric vehicles, said Ji Yang, an official with the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment.

Baby seats will be installed next to the toilets so mothers can free their hands when nature calls.

The estimated cost of each toilet is between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan.

Urinals for children and barrier-free facilities will be installed in the city's current toilets, together with ventilation and air conditioning systems to ensure a stable temperature of at least 12 degrees Celsius in winter and no higher than 30 degrees Celsius in summer, he said.

In southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, authorities have begun to build "five-star" toilets.

The Nan'an District government recently revealed a plan to build 10 such "five-star" public toilets.

According to Liu Jian, deputy director with the district sanitation bureau, the project is aimed at upgrading old toilets in Nan'an while providing "more humane toilet services" to the public.

"The toilets will have WiFi service, free water, first-aid kits, food heating and even mobile phone chargers," Liu said.

Criteria for the rating system were set in 2010, when the Chongqing government issued a guideline to provide the best toilets to the public.

A "five-star" public toilet should "have ornamental qualities" with flower terraces and air-conditioners, among other amenities. All rated toilets should be free to the public, the guideline said.

The Nan'an District government put six "five-star" public toilets into use in 2015, with another 10 under construction, according to the local government.

Meanwhile, the central government plans to punish "uncivilized behavior" in public toilets, with tourists who misbehave to be added to the country's tourism blacklist, according to Li Shihong, deputy head of the NTA. But he did not elaborate on what "uncivilized behavior" includes or how the plan would be carried out. Endi