So there I was sitting around a dinner with my Thai friends. They were foreign students at the university next to the middle school that we were teaching at. We were on a GAP year working as English teachers in Nanning city, Guangxi province. I was 18 years old and had been in China for a week. Oliver and I lived in the same complex as the foreign students, which were made up of mainly Thais, Laotians and Vietnamese. They had invited us over for a home-cooked meal. It was great; the table was laid out with sautéed vegetable dishes, poached fish, steaming bowls of rice, shredded chilli beef, juicy mushroom-stuffed omelettes and shiny glass noodles in which nestled succulent pink shrimp with round black eyes. We sat on cushions around the low table, raised our glasses of cold Qingdao beer high in thanks to this wonderful feast we were about to receive and began to chat and drink and eat. The food was amazing and I helped myself to everything there was; mutilating the fish and messily tearing off chunks of omelette with my limited chopstick skills, dropping the beef half way from the dish to my own bowl and generally spoiling things. Regardless of this I managed to arrange a nice little display of various goodies in my own bowl (as well as on my lap) and was just about to dive in when I felt this hand restrain my eager chopstick wielding arm. I looked to my right. It was Burin, an insane Thai.
“That isn’t Thai style” he said without a hint of a smile. He then dumped what must have been a couple of pounds of Chilli flakes on top of my food. “Now you eat Thai style” he said, and then went back to his meal. I stared at my bowl for a few minutes, various thoughts going through my head; some of a calculative nature, like ‘how am I going to eat this without going into cardiac arrest?’ or ‘how can I dump this into the nearest plant pot/under the table without being noticed/offending my hosts?’ and other thoughts of a darker nature as I turned to look at Burin as he munched away silently. In the end I concluded that there was no way around it and so breathing deeply, I raised my chopsticks with dignity and took what I thought was just enough to not be considered a girly amount of chilli covered rice and fish as I felt Burin’s sly eyes burning into the side of my face. Time for the plunge.
No, I can’t do it.
Do it Doug!
No.
What are you chicken, is that it?
That’s it, buddy! You asked for it!
And I stuck it all in my mouth…then I spat it back out into my bowl, then seeing everyone turn to look at me I put it back in my mouth again and swallowed. Now, coming from the land of bland, I am not accustomed to chilli. I don’t particularly like curry or chilli con carne or anything of a spicy nature so to describe to you the discomfort that I was feeling at that particular moment may seem exaggerated, but it felt very real. I automatically grabbed the beer and downed it in one. It didn’t help. I asked for more. My nose began to run and I started to sweat profusely. The next few minutes were spent wiping myself in various places with napkins, drinking more beer and contemplating the next mouthful with my tongue hanging out like a damned cocker spaniel. I was becoming a laughing stock. I decided to be a man (or an idiot) and picking up my bowl, I ploughed through it trying to ignore the discomfort until I had finished my bowl and then more beer and more beer until I was tipsy enough to forget all about my culinary misfortunes. The rest of the meal was a breeze; we made jokes and laughed until late into the evening. Yes, it was a wonderful night…until my stomach started feeling a little queasy. The chilli hadn’t sat well with me. “Where’s the bathroom?” I casually asked. “Down the hall” was my answer; so with a drunkard’s grin I stumbled down the hallway to the men’s toilet, but sobered up real quick when I opened the cubicle door and found no toilet; at least not one that I recognised. There was something resembling a flat, white-tile urinal or basin fitted into the floor with a hole toward the back of it. I convinced myself that it was perhaps an instrument for washing ones feet, so I opened the next cubicle but found the same thing, and at the next one and the one after that. The sweating started up again. My stomach churned. I looked around at the raised urinal in desperation but that idea quickly faded. I had no other choice. Stepping in and closing the cubicle door fast behind me I considered the ‘toilet’ for a moment. How does one use it? Does one sit on the floor? Crouch? Stand? Climb? Do a Handstand? While disputing all these theories my stomach reminded me again of the urgency of my condition and I was forced to opt for the most sensible one. Taking down the trousers, I assumed a squatting position like I had seen many Chinese construction workers doing at the roadside; being overly wary of where my rear end was in relation to my pants. The next problem was balancing. I remembered that when Chinese squat, their feet are placed flat on the floor, not on tip toes which, if you try it for the first time, is actually a rather difficult thing to do. I realised this by losing my balance and smashing into both walls to either side of me and then falling forward while desperately trying to avoid making contact with the toilet with my bare behind. I finally remedied this by placing my hands on either side of the cubicle wall. Then I waited. I waited so long that the muscles in my legs started to get cramp and my hips felt like they were parting from their sockets. I noticed a receptacle to the side of me filled with used toilet paper. It seemed that in order to avoid blocking the pipes, one couldn’t flush paper down the toilet, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that and flushed it anyway. Happy with my progress, I decided to make my way back to the party, however only when trying to move did I realise that I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. I had done the business but now I couldn’t get up. I was paralysed with cramp. I let out a scream. The door was too far away for me to grab the handle and the walls were bare. I turned my head around and saw that there was a water pipe climbing 2 feet up from the base of the toilet before disappearing into the wall behind me. Reaching around with both hands, I slowly pulled myself up the pipe until I was high enough to stand unaided and then, pulling up my trousers, I staggered out of the cubicle, bow-legged and aching, leaving that Venus fly trap of a toilet forever.

People have given the following reasons why squat toilets are better than western style toilets:
1)It is cleaner and easier to maintain.
2)It is more hygienic as one’s buttocks don’t make contact with an unsanitary surface (unless you’ve never used one before).
3)The lack of water in the bowl means one can avoid splashing.
4)Apparently the squatting posture is better for the individual as it eases pressure from and protects the nerves that control the uterus, bladder and prostate from becoming stretched and damaged.
5)It is said to reduce the severity and occurrence of haemorrhoids.

But you know what? I don’t care. There are some things I don’t want to be good at.

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