One country, two cisterns

"New Delhi, June 27 : Chinese authorities in Beijing are planning to publish a regulation on public toilets' management to ensure that people flocking to the capital in the wake of the Olympic Games can find restrooms when they need to "answer the call of nature".

Ma said that there were 5,333 public toilets and 270 mobile ones in Beijing, and that the commission was working on locating each toilet using the Global Positioning System. "

This isn't new. Beijing has had GPS to locate toilets for years. especially the three years I was there. One simply opens one's nose and starts the GPS function, the Glorious Pee Smell. There was one by the public bus stop I used frequently, #16,26,105,601, that was locatable from at least a hundred metres downwind and on a radius of fifty metres on a still day. One couldn't walk along the other side of the street without knowing exactly where it was. There was one in my teaching building, two classrooms away but I knew where it was too. The one on the eighth floor wasn't much better, or in terms on locatability, was equally good.

It's not only BJ has the GPS network. I used it in Yunnan, Hunan, and various cities in Dongbei. The GPS system is faulty in Changsha, where "they" built four kilometres of riverside promenade with no public facilities, so your nose function may lead you to improper corners. One could always pretend to be French. "Weel, everyone elze uzes it, you can tell zat by ze pong, so why should not eye! Uh??"

However the traveller in Macau has a problem. There is no GPS here. Not even in the schools. Thus if the traveller needs to use the facilities, he will have to look for signs, otherwise he will walk right past the toilets without his GPS function flashing up the block your nose red flashing warning.

I did read in today's paper that BJ is making a special effort to upgrade its toilets and 8,000 workers have been trained to keep them clean. What's new 2 ? These people were lingering before but one assumed they had nothing better to do, or were untrainable in toilet training, or were selling fake toilet paper.

And of course this is the wet season in Macau. An inch an hour. I'll let you know what happens in the dry season. If there is one.