Peeing For Civilization
The urinal messaging campaign caused me to question my own peeing stance
It is not uncommon to see plaques above public urinals urging the urinator to step closer. What I first arrived in China every urinal had them, but they have become less common in newer public bathrooms. I have never brought these urinal plaques up in conversation or heard them mentioned by either expats or locals. I have filed this public safety campaign in the back of my mind as one of the many amusing curiosities that come with life in China.
How serious is the problem of men peeing too far from the urinal? Is it a problem in other countries as well? I have peed in many crowded public urinals, large and small, and have not noticed any behavior different in China from what I have seen in the U.S. Moreover, compared to a city like New York, where I lived for 8 years, China has plentiful well-maintained clean, public toilet facilities. Usually each one has an attendant to takes ownership of their is responsible for the cleanliness of their particular toilet.
Public bathroom facilities were quite different in 1981, the first time I travelled in China. In fact, many of the facilities were a bit traumatizing for my western sensibilities. For example, the outhouse which was perched over a rice paddy which had no door. The bus I was on taking through the mountains to Hangzhou was parked right next to me as I sat on the rough toilet seat and I could feel the eyes of fellow passengers looking out the bus window at me. My poop, by the way, fell directly onto a compost pile below, which was situated conveniently next to the field. In the early 1980s even in a city like Beijing, the toilet used by customers of one of the city’s most famous peking duck restaurants was a crude structure across the street with rows of cement slabs where users squatted and defecated into a ditch which was periodically hosed down. Even the trains I took during the 1980s had only simple squat toilets where passengers peed or pooped into an open hole above train tracks speeding by below.
With absolutely no information to back up my hypothesis, I imagine that these urinal signs are the visible tail of a long snaking series of government beaurocratic problem solving measures; maybe a kind of virture signaling by construction companies? Maybe there is evidence to show that this propaganda campaign leads to less pee on the floor and is worth the investment. At any rate I enjoy seeing the different variations on a theme in both the graphics and slogans and hope they never completely disappear, for the good of civilization.
