“Where are you going? We’re almost at Badaling.”

“I know, I’m just going to use the bathroom.”

“Have you ever used a squat toilet?”

“No, why?”

“Because if you can hold it, I suggest you don’t start on a moving train.”

Mark looked at me, bemused. Oh, sweet summer child…

I was worried about many things before our trip to China. Would we be able to get a SIM card and figure out the two ubiquitous payment apps? Would my VPN allow me to access Gmail, Google, and more? Would we adapt to the 2024 post-pandemic version of China?

And somehow, I completely forgot about squat toilets.

I used the bathroom at the mall on our first night in Beijing. And when I opened the door, I stood there for a split second, scanning the tiny stall at knee level, looking for a familiar seat on which I never sit, of course.

“Oh, right…”

As a human being, a woman and a traveller, I pee several times a day and I overcame the “won’t go if I’m not at home!” a long time ago because guess what, I’m rarely at home (and I’m not even sure where home is but that’s another issue).

So yes, I pee in toilets I haven’t cleaned myself. What else am I supposed to do? I learned to hover over the seat, squat, and even pee standing up. No, seriously.

And I can tell you about public toilets all over the world. For instance, it sucks to walk around with a baby jumping on your bladder in New York and London—it’s awfully difficult to find public toilets. Canada used to be a great place for bathroom breaks because you could just duck into a fast-food restaurant or coffee shop, no question asked… but now, most bathrooms are locked, probably because of the opioid crisis. Brazil, a country of beer and coffee drinkers who probably need to pee at one point, is awesome—even supermarkets have public toilets, and there’s always a sink with soap for proper hand hygiene. France used to have terrible public toilets but it’s getting better, although you may have to pay to use them in Paris. And of course, the French are obsessed with pink toilet paper.

How about China?

You can find toilets in malls, train stations, and more but small restaurants and coffee shops typically don’t have a bathroom—you’ll be directed to public toilets in the street. Many old-style apartment buildings share a communal bathroom. This is especially true in the narrow hútòng.

Public bathrooms in China look like your typical Western public bathrooms with sinks and stalls. However, squatting toilets still reign supreme. All the apartments we rented have Western toilets but in public places, expect cubicles, doors (at least waist-high), and a squatting pan—the flushable kind, not the hole-in-the-ground kind.

Toilet paper isn’t usually provided and if so, not in each stall, but at the entrance (plan ahead!)—it goes into the waste basket, obviously. There’s rarely any soap as well, so bring your own sanitizer.

There are always tons of signs on the door, most of them reminding people how to squat properly and to please, not smoke in the bathroom. Smoking in the bathrooms is a thing in China, and I just don’t understand why because I can’t think of a worse place to enjoy a cigarette!