Appearing at a toilet near you

The framed advertisement to the left has appeared above urinals in public toilets around Beijing. It promotes the services of the Dongda Hospital for Anus and Intestinal Diseases and contains a poem. The poem is about misshapen foreskins. The images of emerging hatchlings represent the crimped anterior region of the male sex organ -- the Chinese word for penis is a homonym for little chicken. A rough translation follows:

A Must-Read for Men

Too long a foreskin wrapped as bark
The myriad of forms and shapes
Too much toil sets Heaven askew
Worms and germs upset and vex.

Offensive odors swollen red
Lengthy foreskin is to blame
And if yours is so afflicted
Dongda Clinic has your fix.

Korean-style circumcision
Absent pain and absent wound
Awkward maladies will vanish
Lovers laugh and beam with bliss

Where is this Dongda Hospital?
South of Landao Mansion’s side
8563-9299 give a call
Ensure your lover’s happiness

Danwei is outraged by these ads. If this profit-driven trend toward noting the shortcomings of our johnsons is allowed to continue in the one place in the city where we can share a private moment with our valued members, then China’s progress in the way of public facilities will face a swift reversal.

And to think how far the culture of the water closet had advanced. The Qing Dynasty’s last emperor, Puyi, enjoyed no fixed commode in the entire Forbidden City. He instead summoned eunuchs carrying a silver pan and a donut-shaped stool. Ordinary Chinese squatted above the cistern down the ally, and fetid public conveniences in Beijing remained little improved until only two years ago. That’s when, in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing city government ordered nearly four thousand eco-friendly, color-coordinated, lily-fragrant public toilets.

We at Danwei applauded that decision. It indicated not just forward planning but also that China had left the political struggles of the past at a distant remove. After all, we recall what befell history’s most virtuous sanitation worker. As the Communist Party’s “model hero of nightsoil portage” during the 1960s, Shi Chuangxiang’s nightly task was to empty the city’s pit latrines. This he did with such élan that, like model soldier Lei Feng, his story of selfless toil became familiar to schoolchildren from the Yalu river to the Laotian border. He even shook hands with China’s president, Liu Shaoqi -- and that moment, captured by photographers, became his undoing. When President Liu was purged as a “capitalist roader” in 1967, Shi fell into disgrace, faced torment by ultra-leftist Red Guards and died of a broken heart.

Gladly, the reformist leadership under communist patriarch Deng Xiaoping decreed that leftist politics must no longer intrude upon the smooth functioning of public conveniences. First, it introduced economic reforms to feed the masses. That accomplished, it pointed the levers of power toward the softer side of governance. As ministry of construction official Zhang Yue admitted to attendees of the World Toilet Summit in Beijing in October 2004, “We’d been too busy feeding and clothing the people and paid scant attention to public toilets.”

Well, Mr. Zhang, your political pendulum has swung too far the other way. Having allowed market forces to improve the common weal, you now allow them to undermine it. And you should have known better. Didn’t the government commission studies showing that the market economy left people wealthier and
happier even as it increased their resentment of excesses like corruption and money-grubbing? We tell you, toilets are no different. The new stainless steel urinals and ample use of industrial deodorants leave us happier, but we resent the excessive reach of marketeers whose alarming services affront us as we stand to relieve ourselves.

Mr. Zhang, we call on you to remove this advertising and allow us once again to urinate without being reminded that a clutch of Korean quacksalvers stands ready to have at our foreskins with scalpels. Thank you. Thank you very much.

This is the original Chinese text of the advertisement:

包皮过长和包茎
生理特征各不同
工作学习忙翻天
病毒病菌来捣乱
异味红肿时常见
包皮过长是根源
次种情况怎么办
东大医院解您烦
韩国包皮环切术
无痛无创是首选
尴尬病毒都不见
异性伴侣笑开颜
东大医院哪里找
蓝岛大厦靠南边
85639299先咨询
健康快乐伴随您