China's next revo-loo-tion: Beijing offers glimpse of public toilet offering TV, snacks, cash machines ... and potty training
If you want to do more business, watch television, buy a can of drink, or help your young child with potty training - all while visiting a public toilet in China, then help is now at hand.
“Innovation” is the buzzword of the moment in Beijing, with the government putting special emphasis on connecting every part of life to the web to help boost the economy and create jobs.
Now, even the humble public toilet is being prepared for what authorities call the “Internet Plus” era.
In time Thursday’s World Toilet Day, Beijing put on display a prototype public toilet that bears little resemblance - in sight or smell - to the much criticised dirty, unhygienic toilets that many residents and visitors have endured in the Chinese capital.
Read more: The long wait is over: Chinese ‘revo-loo-tion’ means people can use tourist-site toilets within 10 minutes
Resembling a bright, shiny convenience store, the new facilities feature services including an automatic cash machine, a lounge with vending machines, a computerised telephone machine for paying utility bills, plus an electric-car charging outpost and recycling bins for paper and plastic bottles.
Relaxing, Enya-style songs were played inside for ambience.
Yet that is what is on offer even before you reach the toilet cubicles.
Each one is equipped with a flat-screen television. The specially designed, environmentally conscious toilets use sink waste water for flushing, and even separate urine and faeces to help reduce the use of water by 90 per cent, designers claim.
The Fangshan demonstration toilet focuses on a high level of service, with an attendant cleaning each toilet after use.
People have the choice of using traditional squat toilets or Western-style sit-down toilets, and even a family toilet offers a changing table, a high chair when children can sit while their parents are using the toilet and even a mini-toilet for toddlers that are being potty trained.
However, there are aspects of the toilet that foreigners might find less than cutting-edge.
For example, people still have to pull toilet paper from a common roll upon entering the toilet building, rather than having toilet rolls in each cubicle, which means people have to calculate how much paper they think they will need.
The “5th Space” public toilet in Beijing’s southern district of Fangshan is intended to be the first of many such facilities across the country, said an employee at the state-run Beijing Environmental Health Group.
Planners expect about 2,000 visitors a day at the Fangshan toilet, with the waste stored on-site in treatment tanks and then transported away each week by sewage management vehicles.
China’s tourism bureau said on Thursday that it planned to install 57,000 new public toilets across the nation in the next three years, although only a handful were likely to be as hi-tech as the one at Fangshan.
However, Beijing Environmental Health Group hopes to turn the “Internet Plus” toilets into business platforms, funding them with investment from e-commerce providers, who can use them as hubs to entice people to order products online and then deliver them there, in the same way that Amazon’s locker programme allows people to collect parcels from chosen pick-up points.
The higher level of staffing required to look after the hi-tech toilets would also create service jobs, the company’s employee said.
“Solving the human waste problem for 1.3 billion people is a major goal for the Chinese government,” said the employee, who refused to give his name because he was not sure he had permission to give media interviews.
“It would be a major breakthrough for the development.”
Many people trying out the new toilets in Fangshan on Thursday said they were impressed.
“It’s pretty good,” said Wu Guangxian, 68.
However, he was not sure if the hi-tech amenities would stand the test of time.
“I think they need to install surveillance cameras here,” he said. “Otherwise, children might come and destroy this place.”
In September China National Tourism Administration revealed new plans for a “toilet revo-loo-tion” around the nation so that tourists queuing to use public conveniences at the mainland’s top attractions would not have to wait in line for more than 10 minutes.
All mainland tourist sites classified as 3A or above – the third highest ranking in a five-tier system rated according to the attraction’s importance – will undergo one month of refurbishment to boost hygiene standards, The Beijing Times reported.
The reforms will also see improvements in toilets at restaurants, accommodation, shopping centres and car parks at tourist sites.
Last February, Li Jinzao, director of the tourism administration said that many existing toilets in China were “dirty, messy, substandard and insufficient” and had affected the development and reputation of the nation’s tourism industry.