Beijing Tourists Soon May Spell Relief With 4 Stars

With ever more tourists flocking to the Middle Kingdom, this ancient capital wants to be a world-class destination with everything to offer the discriminating visitor.

So city officials recently unveiled an ambitious plan to build more four-star establishments for the convenience and comfort of out-of-town guests.

But we’re not talking hotels. We’re talking public toilets.

Starting next month, the municipal government is to begin upgrading 452 public bathrooms at scenic spots around Beijing, from the Great Wall to the Forbidden City.

As part of the two-year campaign, officials are planning to award stars to each facility according to a rating system as minutely detailed as anything you’d find in a Michelin guide.

For the complete four-star experience, for example, tourists ought to be treated to good lighting, piped-in music, marble floors, automatic flush systems, fresh flowers and even a TV lounge--just to name a few of the 58 standards the top bathrooms are expected to meet.

On the bottom are the one-star restrooms. Though less special, they should at least offer clean, well-managed facilities of “nice and harmonious” design, stocked with an adequate supply of toilet paper.

Officials are confident that their efforts will help Beijing close the gap with other world capitals in terms of the amenities it provides tourists.

The new rating system, the government says with pride, may well be the first of its kind anywhere.

Although the situation might have its comical side, public bathrooms can be serious business here in a country that earlier this year claimed, on the basis of new archeological evidence, to have invented the world’s first flush toilet 2,000 years ago.

Sensitivity over the state of public latrines is especially acute in Beijing. The city attracts nearly 100 million domestic and overseas tourists a year, many of whom emerge from communal toilets looking more distressed than relieved from the experience.

And with Beijing desperate to win the right to host the Olympics in 2008, officials want their city ready for the inspection committee and judges who will soon be taking their measure of this capital.

“Scenic spots are important places to receive VIPs,” so the facilities at those places must be up to snuff, said Zhou Shuqi, an official with the Beijing Tourism Administration.

What the upgrade campaign will not do, however, is directly benefit the one-third--or nearly 1 million--of the city’s households that must still rely on public toilets for everyday use.

Poverty and crumbling infrastructure have put indoor plumbing out of reach of these residents, who live along densely packed alleyways that once harbored Old Beijing’s graceful, spacious courtyard homes.

Even now, millions of Beijingers who need to use the toilet in the middle of the night must climb out of bed, bundle into heavy coats to ward off the winter chill and shuffle down the lane.

In the mornings, long lines are common, because hundreds of people might share only a few toilets.

The $12 million required to renovate toilets for tourists is therefore meaningless to residents like Yang Wencai, 30, who has lived in an alleyway home all his life.

The bathrooms that tourists will use may well be far cleaner and better-maintained than the one he and his neighbors must put up with.

“This [campaign] is just to give Beijing a pretty face for the Olympic bid,” said Yang, who finds the communal privies in his neighborhood hard to endure.

“It’ll do no good to the people who really live in Beijing and have to go to a public toilet several times a day.”

Residents feel that their complaints are useless.

“Even if I say it’s unfair, who cares?” said Tang Danrong, 69, who lives in the shadow of one of Beijing’s most popular sights, the Temple of Heaven. “The complaints of ordinary people are just like a gust of wind.”

One of the improvements ordered by officials entails the provision of more Western-style toilets in place of the squat variety found throughout China and other parts of Asia. The new rating system specifies a strict 4-to-6 ratio of Western-to-squat toilets in four-star restrooms.

“I’m all for that,” said tourist Ruby Heaton, 53, of Utah.

What about the other added touches--the music, the flowers, the mood lighting?

“That’s not necessary,” Heaton said, laughing. “It’s just a place to go get the job done.”