Coming clean on China's toilet revolution

Everybody has a secret vice. Mine used to be "social" (meaning "hidden") smoking but, when I had to give that up, because it just wasn't feasible, I had to find something else. How could I spend the same money every week, preferably without reeking?

The answer has been The Sunday Times. Now I fork out HK$110 a week for a newspaper.

"You're crazy, why don't you just subscribe and read it online?" my well-meaning detractors, I mean friends, say.

Yes, I know that everything must be online now. But for some reason I can never manage to get through a feature story when it's on a screen. My eyes wander about looking for what they think are key words, my fingers quickly start scrolling down so I can see how long the damn story is and my feet soon carry me out of the room. I need the physical paper, with no distractions. A paper that can have a cup of tea spilled over it without incident and one in whose margins I can scribble with my stone-age pen.

Still, I do occasionally read stories online and one that caught (and kept) my eye recently was in Britain's Telegraph: "China to start 'toilet revolution'". The article was about how the mainland intends to bring its public toilets up to a "three-star rating by 2017" and was accompanied by two photos of - and here I LOL-ed - gleaming toilets.