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When people ask, "What brought you to Hong Kong?" I sometimes hilariously answer, "The train". But that's not 100 per cent true. I took the train from Norway to Beijing and then onto Shanghai, but from there to Hong Kong I travelled by boat.
There were a few British backpackers on board and, travelling by myself with hardly any money and no contacts in Hong Kong, I naturally asked them where they were staying.
"The Peninsula," the clever wags sniggered.
How was I to know this wasn't the name of a backpacker hostel? Or that the real answer was "Chungking Mansions", and that it should have been was so obvious it wasn't even necessary to ask?
I soon found out what kind of place The Peninsula was, but was rather astonished, after seeing the grand reception and dining facilities, to find shoe prints on the otherwise pristine porcelain toilet bowl in the ladies.
I tried to imagine what kind of athletic woman had climbed up on the toilet, balancing there precariously while thinking about life and whatnot, when it was so much easier to sit down. Why, I knew children who had perfected the skill as two-year-olds.
Later on I shared a flat with a Chinese guy and found the same situation in our bathroom. Morning after morning it was print, print; mud, mud. He said he was "afraid the toilet was dirty", which was infuriating as I cleaned the bloody thing each day to get rid of his muddy prints.
Since then I've come to realise that people will squat on top of any type of toilet anywhere, no matter how difficult it is to do so. That's probably how the older generation stays so amazingly limber. None of the morally lazy, nay, downright malingering sell-out, "just sitting quietly on the seat" for them!
Squatting does, of course, make more sense biologically, speeding up the process of elimination no end. Perhaps Elvis would not have died in such an undignified manner if he'd only squatted.
Therefore, I think we'll see footprints on the porcelain of any sit-down throne, in The Peninsula or wherever, for the foreseeable future - especially since no one wants to use a hole-in-the-ground. That is considered unhygienic, while climbing up on the toilet wearing shoes isn't.
As usual, the mainland leads the way in ingenious toilet solutions. In Hunan province, at a Zhangjiajie youth disco, the International Celebrity Night Flame, I was delighted to find this work of art (above).
Elegant and shiny as any toilet in a five-star hotel yet as down to earth as an open sewer, this one, with its wide, flat, shoe-friendly seat, has it all. It should catch on all over the world, eliminating most, if not all, toilet-related concussions.
 


So near, yet so feared: Bowled over

Royal flush: An exercise in squatters' rights. Photo: Cecilie Gamst Berg

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So near, yet so feared: Bowled over

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Cecilie Gamst Berg

Cecilie Gamst Berg