On a roll: campaign to clean up China’s toilets gathers pace
The publication of a list of leaders and laggards in the ‘toilet revolution’ is the latest step in a two-year plan to change the nation’s loos from ramshackle to respectable
China’s campaign to clean up its notoriously filthy and smelly public toilets has moved to the next level with the tourism authorities publishing the first-ever list of leaders and laggards in the government’s two-year “toilet revolution”.
The nation will build or renovate 71,000 toilets by the end of this year, the National Tourism Administration said in a report after a meeting late last week on progress in the campaign, but its list of sites failing to make the grade shows there is still work to do.
The China Xixia Dinosaur Park in Henan province and the Qinghai Lake scene area in the northwest were given “severe warnings” for “seriously lagging behind” in restroom conditions, the report said.
Ten other scenic areas classified by the government as 4A sites – the second-highest rating for tourist attractions – were named and shamed for failing to properly manage toilets. The sites included the Five Springs Park in Gansu province, the Sanshui hot spring resort in Foshan, Guangdong province and the Deyu ecological park in Jiangxi province.
Visitors complained about restrooms characterised by open pits or communal trenches without privacy or toilet paper, or even “ramshackle shelters surrounded by bunches of cornstalk”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
“At tourist sites, visitors were angered by insufficient toilets, unhygienic conditions, and a lack of sanitation workers”, the Xinhua report said.