Clean Toilets: What’s all the Flush About?

According to this Jinghua Shibao weibo post from last Thursday, China’s Ministry of Health released a draft proposal for standardizing public toilet sanitation across the country. The proposal, which sought opinions from the public, included the following regulations:

• Public toilet odors will be divided into 4 levels:
  1）None 2) A little 3) Noticeable 4) Strong.
• All communal public toilets should remain at odor level 1 with only 1 fly permitted per square meter.
• All stand-alone public toilets should remain at odor level 2 with 3 flies per square meter.

There was no clear indication as to how the four odor levels should be determined or who will be swatting those pesky flies to keep their numbers down. The general reaction from netizens was that while flies and smell are an issue in public toilets, they are not quantifiable and that this is a stupid system.

You’ll probably remember that last May, the City of Beijing made international news headlines with a rule that limited all public toilets to two flies. While at the time this seemed incredibly dumb, at least the municipality didn’t propose to measure the strengths of potty odors...

In terms of toilet conditions around China, the Beijing Society for Promoting Environment and Conservation commented that putting a few rolls of toilet paper in public WCs may be a better move for everybody. We don’t think that's a terrible idea at all.

What do you think is the best way to improve Beijing’s toilets? Will they ever be fit for an Andy Lau video?