Friday, May 16, 2008

Lots of funny pictures within links

The following was submitted to ESPN The Blog a couple days ago, but seeing as it's yet to run, I don't think they'll mind if I reproduce the content here.


In advance of the Olympics, Beijing's taken many steps to make the city as presentable and Western-friendly as possible. You may have heard about the smoking ban, the driving constraints, etiquette training and bus ad restrictions, but perhaps this fell through the crack (NO PUN INTENDED):

BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Beijing is to standardize the city's toilet direction plates ahead of the Olympics, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

The plate, already in use in some places, features white male and female characters on a blue background, the paper quoted officials with Beijing's city government.

[Source: BOCOG]

Just another example of an overanxious country fussing over details? Probably. There's 5,000 years' worth of culture and insight inside these geopolitical borders waiting to impress itself upon the world, and we'd hate to see that coming-out party marred by nonstandard bathroom direction plates.

But that's another story. We just thought we'd take this moment to present some clean, good ol' toilet humor -- urinals, toilets, pictograms, oh my!

And lest you forget where we're reporting from, it's China, after all, that opened "the world's largest restroom," complete with "Virgin Mary-theme urinals." Yep.

POSTSCRIPT: Also from the BOCOG article: "Beijing, with 5,174 public toilets, has outpaced New York, London and Tokyo and become the world's No. 1 metropolis as far as public toilets are concerned." We wonder if they're including squat toilets, the use of which forces the user to exercise strange, underutilized core muscles that'd make any plyometrics trainer proud. Because those most definitely should not count. Trust us.

1 comment:

The Jamboree said...

You really shouldn't make light of the situation - as I understand it, many coming-out parties here in San Francisco are marred by nonstandard bathroom direction plates.