Flushing Toilet in China

Posted by Selina Lai

December 12, 2007

There’s a notice on my dorm building (the main dorm for international students at BLCU) that told us that we won’t be having any HOT water for a week from 8am-6pm.

This is quite alright with me since I like having late showers anyway, but when I went to turn on the hot water (during the set time period), a stream of ugly brown sewer-like water came out!!! So, to my horror, I had to make do with an unsatisfying FREEZING COLD shower - and can I just add that it’s currently WINTER here and I’ve never experience below zero Celcius until now.

I suppose I should be happy it’s the HOT water that they’re fixing up and not the COLD water. It was already bad enough the last time we didn’t have cold water because that meant we didn’t actually have any flushing toilet water! I only discovered this fact when we had used up all the stored water in the toilet…

For those who may come across this problem, you might want to consider the following for flushing toilets:

Fill a large container (a medium sized pot will suffice) with water (assuming they only blocked the hot or cold water). If you don’t have either and you’re desperate, use drinking water.
Lift up the toilet seat to optimise the target area.
Position the container about 30cm from the toilet rim.
Pour in ALL the water at once into the toilet bowl. It’s important that there is a decent amount of water poured in all at once and also at a decent but steady speed to create the ‘flushing’ effect.
If the nasty stuff is still there, increase the amount of water and repeat with increased speed.
If it still doesn’t work, fill the toilet tank manually and then FLUSH!
If all else fails, call in a Fuyuan and bug the hell out of them until the toilet is fixed!

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P.S. The toilet service man usually only comes in the evenings around 4pm. If your toilet was blocked the night before, you might want to consider hiding out in the many cafes around the Wudaokou area.

P.P.S. And please remember, learn from other peoples’ mistakes, no flushing toilet paper down china toilets (especially the ones with the sign). The toilet WILL clog!!

Toilet