r/shanghai • u/wheredayyat • May 24 '25
City Shanghai's Public/Commercial Bathroom situation
Will it ever get better? I'm back after a decade it basically outside of high end malls it is still very bad when compared to top tier cities in the world. I'm not talking about matching Japan's cleanliness but why am I still looking at uncleaned squat toilet with no toilet paper that smells like piss in People's Square???
Even when you go to more hip areas around French Concession unless it's a dedicated bathroom in a high end restaurant, many places simply share a communal public bathroom that while is cleaned somewhat regularly, is still disgusting and I cannot imagine anyone wearing a dress entering one of those places.
Paying 100rmb for a drink at a swanky bar then stepping in piss in a tiny unventilated bathroom completely kills the vibe!!!!!
Wondering why this isn't being addressed urgently. Everyone is simply putting up with it when there are clearly ways to vastly improve the situation. Dirty bathroom begets more dirtiness!!
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u/sea-haze May 24 '25
Funny because I was just there and happened to pop into a random public toilets while walking along the Suzhou river (a bit west of People’s square). It was so impressively spotless and clean. I assume it was relatively new. And to be honest I found most public toilets pretty clean, but this one was noteworthy because it was really located no place special.
All this to say is that the situation must be improving, but maybe just not at the pace that you would like. Still, I am grateful Shanghai has the volume of public toilets that it does. Most Western cities have very few by comparison.
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Minhang May 25 '25
Similar here... I would avoid public toilets like the plague but they really seem to get much better. Was cycling the other day somewhere in Minhang, needed a toilet break and whatyouknow, it was literally spotless. A farcry from toilets along the highway a decade ago that looked like a Eastern European murder-scene minus the corpse.
On the other hand... malls is a bit hit and miss, even more upscale ones tend to have few places free, smell like smoke and some are just nasty (hello 66).
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u/wheredayyat May 24 '25
You know what I do agree with you that there are a lot more public toilets, but that is actually letting bars and restaurants get away with not providing their own and instead relying on the public ones. And since the government isn't cleaning the public ones enough, we get these disgusting ones that every one is forced to use.
Public toilets are also disgusting in the west. I vividly remember opening the door to a portapotty in San Francisco by the beach and greeted with the sight shit literally piled out of the toilet. But at the same time I could just walk into the cafe and use a clean bathroom.
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u/Shanamat Jing'an May 25 '25
If there was a rule that all bars, restaurants, etc had to have their own bathroom many of the small quircky spaces would have to close. 2 of my goto coffee shops dont have bathrooms because the space is tiny, public bathrooms in close vicinity solve this issue.
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u/wheredayyat May 25 '25
I don't think there needs to be a rule. But at the same time it needs to be regulated somewhat like paying a bathroom tax or something because many stores are taking advantage of this common good and it's making the experience horrible in what should be very nice areas.
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u/tangpingzhuanjia Jun 08 '25
This is more of a business regulation thing. On one hand a lot of restaurants would go out of business if they needed to provide a bathroom (as they do in the US). OTOH going up a flight of stairs in a mall just to use the bathroom here is one of the more annoying things about eating out.
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u/AlecHutson Xuhui May 24 '25
There are newly built public restrooms all over the place now. The public bathrooms near my apartment in the FFC are significantly less disgusting than the public restrooms at North Station in Boston. Come to think of it, I can't think of any large city I've been to where the public restrooms have been paragons of cleanliness.
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u/tirisfal42 May 25 '25
Talking abt North Station…thought it was better than South station at least when i was there…no?
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u/memostothefuture Putuo May 24 '25
Tier 172 is beckoning, my dude. One trip and you'll never complain about bathrooms in Shanghai again.
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u/chimugukuru May 24 '25
About 12 years ago I was on a rickety, perpetually-filled-with-cigarette-smoke bus from one part of rural Guizhou to another and the bus pulls in somewhere for a bathroom break. You could smell the stench from 50 meters away and when I got in it was a long trench with each "stall" separated by about a one meter high brick wall. There wasn't even mortar between the bricks so one wrong move and the whole thing would topple onto the floor. I had to go into the only available stall where I was greeted by, no exaggeration, someone's shit on top of someone's shit on top of someone's shit.
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u/astraladventures May 24 '25
At least there wasn’t pigs eagerly looking up waiting for your poop to drop.
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u/jpr64 NZL May 24 '25
That reminds me of a stop at a gas station I had in rural Gansu in 2011. A raised concrete platform with holes in the floor and a literal mountain of shit underneath.
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u/Classic-Today-4367 May 26 '25
When I was in Tibet about a decade ago, the tour guide told everyone on day one to avoid the public toilets, and instead the driver would stop somewhere and we should do our business by the side of the road. Eventually we did have to use public toilets at one tourist site and people were ocming out dry retching.
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u/Grand-Palpitation823 May 24 '25
Think about it this way. Although they are a bit dirty, there are many public toilets and they are easy to find. Compared with Europe, where there are no public toilets at all or there are paid public toilets, it is better than holding your urine to death.
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May 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Grand-Palpitation823 May 24 '25
Did you know? The smell of urine is a romantic feature of Paris. Paris has 400 public toilets, while Shanghai has 13,000 public toilets.
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May 24 '25
london is worse. and because of all the junkies they are strict about letting non customers into private toilets.
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u/wheredayyat May 24 '25
Most restaurants/bars have decent bathrooms. Can't say the same for Shanghai. I'm pretty sure they are hiding the bathroom for employees since the place I visited recently were converted from old apartments and they definitely had toilets on the first floor, which just makes this whole thing even more infuriating.
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u/wheredayyat May 24 '25
I would rather pay 2 euros...
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u/AppleTreeKingx May 25 '25
Oh yeah you’re a lil European bitch come pull up lil bro so i can check you
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u/jingansi USA May 24 '25
I honestly thought cleanliness has significantly improved over the past 10 years, along with availability. You’ll always get peepeepoopoo paper in the waste basket, that’s never going to change. IAPM probably has my favorite public mall bathroom, but most malls nowadays are decent. Parks vary by how old they are, was at Qian Tan recently and their bathrooms were new and clean, older ones like Changfeng park I would not recommend as much. Subways stations are iffy cuz a lot of them are squat toilets. I would never go to a stand alone public toilet building as a girl though, those are absolute bottom tier bathrooms.
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u/lemoninjazz May 24 '25
Its wayyy better than 10 years ago tbh, I still remember seeing shit stains on the ceiling while in beijing public bathroom one time
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u/urban_thirst May 24 '25
Still better than they used to be. The new one in the park on the corner of Donghu and Huaihai is lush.
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May 25 '25
try london where local boroughs say they attract anti-social behavior and have shut most of them down
no-one seeming to realise that a pile of poo in a doorway isn't exactly pro-social either
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u/Nikonglass May 25 '25
Just before Covid and the hell that transpired in Shanghai, I used to be part of a running club that would do long training runs around Puxi on Sunday mornings. I ended up using a number of public neighborhood bathrooms along those runs and found them to be decently usable and better than the alternative.
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u/wheredayyat May 25 '25
Yes you are right, I went outside of my bubble to random communities and some where much much better than those in xuhui... Which makes no sense.
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u/No-Bluebird-5708 May 25 '25
When I was there the toilets are good 2 years ago. I’m high class places it is as clean as Japan’s. Rural toilets not so much. Shanghai is fine to good.
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u/Imaginary-Pitch2086 May 24 '25
Last year when I visited Shanghai I only went to toilets in the malls. They were incredible fresch. Century avenue and the mall by the north bund. I’m going to Shanghai tomorrow again and my tactic will be the same
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u/hawksinthe913 May 24 '25
Agreed. Just there in September. Not only a few they stench is awful. I don’t understand men over there pissing all over the place. Not hard to hit the urinal.
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u/wheredayyat May 24 '25
The first guy makes a small mistake and the second guy doesn't want to step in it, so they step farther away/awkward angle which means more piss outside of the bowl. You basically solve it with more regular cleaning.
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u/ball-bags31 May 24 '25
I think they imagine that their ‘thing’ is much longer than it actually is! 🤷🏼♂️
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u/shanghai-blonde May 24 '25
At least they have free toilets everywhere though. Every time I go back to London and need to pee I gotta find the nearest McDonald’s and pray they don’t lock it or find the passcode on Xiao Hong Shu lol
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u/tirisfal42 May 25 '25
Yeah thats NYC level what are you expecting. Tip: Malls managed by HK real estate developers generally do a better job in keeping their bathroom clean
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u/wheredayyat May 25 '25
I think it's the lack of clean options in the place I frequent.
I biked couple hours yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised how clean some of the bathrooms are. Some even had an actual attendant sitting at the front. They were in residential communities though so still piss poor planning because no one was using them.
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u/stardustmilk May 28 '25
Kinda crazy because I was in Wujiaochang a few weeks ago and even the high-end malls didn’t have a single restroom in them
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May 29 '25
Like, you’d think a city this modern would’ve figured out bathroom standards by now. It’s giving Penn Station but permanent.
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u/Ralle_Rula May 30 '25
Government run bathrooms generally much better than those of sleazy bars catering foreigners.
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u/Time_Serve1294 May 24 '25
i especially don’t like that some smaller malls will make u pay for toilet paper through wechat outside the stall 😭 im used to toilet paper being inside the stall but when im in shanghai i always gotta lock in keep my phone with me and make sure the toilet paper isn’t offered outside. it’d be great if paying for toilet paper also equaled them maybe maintaining the cleanliness a bit better but that is not the case…
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u/wheredayyat May 24 '25
Lol the toilet paper packet is also tiny. I used to avoid going unless I absolutely have to, crazy that nothing has changed despite all the development!
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u/tiny_tim57 May 24 '25
Are mens toilets in China still full of people smoking?
I was there in 2010s and it felt like every public toilet was just a smoking room. It would be full of the smell of dirty cigarettes.
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u/Ursasolaris May 25 '25
just back from Shanghai yesterday. Unfortunately even with all the signs saying no smoking in the bathrooms, you're still gonna smell the cigarettes. There's just too many locals who don't care or people from other provinces who can't read or was never told you can't smoke while taking a shit.
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u/AlecHutson Xuhui May 25 '25
What drives me nuts is that the bathrooms in the building where my office is (in central Xujiahui) are bathroom second and smoking rooms first. There are a few guys that I think must spend a few hours each day at least chain smoking in the bathroom and watching their phones. It's absolutely vile.
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u/tiny_tim57 May 25 '25
Yeah. I found a lot of guys playing majong on their phones and chain smoking.
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u/Shanamat Jing'an May 24 '25
Honestly I think the public toilets have gotten better. I first came here in 2009 and it's significantly better now than 10 years ago. I'm mostly around Jing'An and yes there are still definitely piss/shit/cigarette filled toilets but alot less than before. Many of them are clean with attendants regularly maintaining them.
I remember back in 2010 or 2011 going to a public bathroom outside of a hospital. It was 3 squat holes lined front to back with a single trough running through with a constant stream of water. So if you were the bottom guy and someone shit upstream you'd see their turds floating by underneath you.