Why Bathrooms at Elite Colleges are Still Worse than the Ones You Come Across in the Ghetto

(Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of a ghetto bathroom because China decided that my search for "bathrooms ghetto" on Google images was probably subversive toward the central government)

Everyone knows that China has a rather large population, in fact I think it might be fair to call it a problem. Its One-Child policy is ubiquitously known throughout the West, though many fail to recognize that it only applies to Han Chinese living in cities, particularly the overpopulated cities that dot across East China. This lends it hand to a large pool of college applicants every year, some going so far as to avoid such petty luxuries like food and sleep for a month in order to test well on the gaokao (Chinese university entrance exams), often times undermined by their richer more well connected counterpoints who can steal their records and enter university on another student's credentials, but that topic is for another time. You would think that the level of competition and the amount of prestige that surrounds China's top universities would encourage adminstration to put a little effort into having as good living facilities as lab facilities, but instead the students live in the same squalor as that of the lab rats which they perform tests on.

My point is that the bathrooms are ghetto as hell. It's such that I would be more comfortable in Southeast DC than in Northeast China. The bathroom set up seems to defy not only feng shui but also Western/Modern (I can't help but use these words interchangeably in this respect) health standards.

The bathroom is a rectangle and looking into it from one of the shorter side you can see the awkward water heater, placed somewhat close to the ceiling (which is not very high) jutting out of the opposite wall beckoning you to slam your head into it. Unfortunately, this is not difficult to do as the awkward placement of the fairly large sink and relatively long counter top right across from the shower head cuts down the area of shower space to what feels like one square foot. Then you have to find a way to keep all of the water from the shower head within your square foot of showering space, out of your mouth and away from the toilet area.

It literally is a toilet area. Basically what the Chinese did was take that rectangle/bathroom and put the toilet (one that you best not flush toilet paper down) on the shorter side of the rectangle/bathroom, right against the wall.

Not only will you invariably miss the drain, the one that is half closed/clogged, placed against the opposite wall from the shower in between the shower space and the toilet space and underneath the sink (I know it's awkward), but you will come to accept that any and all of your attempts to keep that water within your one square foot of space are in vain. So water that should go down that curiously-placed drain will instead flow freely across the floor of your bathroom for the next 3 hours. And let's not forget the wonderful mildew-y smell that can result if you don't realize that the small white box on the wall with the string hanging from it is the ventilator.

China is a curious place with curious customs and curious bathrooms. And it is curious how they think that they can be the world's most powerful nation with bathrooms that, in my opinion, rival those of the 1900s America and fall far behind those in 2009 Compton.

Also, the mirror in the bathroom is too low so I can only see the bottom part of my face. It's annoying.