On Chinese toilets

We met a whole variety of toilets in China and, as an essential part of daily life, it's important to devote a blog to them.  

Most Chinese toilets are squat ones which I don't mind at all as they are quite hygienic.  I did, however, always have to ensure that my sunglasses weren't balanced on head before using these - I certainly didn't want to loose my shades down one of these.  (Picture below of outside of pleasant version).

Less pleasant is that, due to inadequate sewage plumbing, you couldn't throw paper down them, and had to place it in a basket next to the toilet.  Starting, as we did, in the north western side of China, the further west we headed, away from urban influence, the worse the toilets got.  This was mainly because they were quite remote and weren't cleaned regularly.  The pile of used toilet tissues stacked up in horrendous, smelly heaps at the more remote regions.  There were occasions when Chinese women refused to enter cubicles and I just strode past them.  There is a time and a place to be fussy, and halfway up a mountain pass isn't one of them.

As we turned back and headed east they improved km by km.

Our hotel toilets were, in contrast, particularly glam.  In Tashkurgan we encountered our first heated toilet seat.  We had encountered these last year too - strange and not terribly comforting.  There was an array of functions to improve the experience - needless to say I steered clear of most of the buttons (the baby one - do you wash your kid in these?).

One of our toilets had a remote control.

Alongside the build of the toilet, I amused myself taking photos of helpful signs associated with toilets.  

I wasn’t sure why the toilet paper was useless, then I realised it was missing a space - “use less”. 

The most high tech toilet event I saw was at airports.  There was a screen outside each bathroom with a floor plan layout and red/green lights showing if a unit was occupied or not.  It was kind of cute but kind of weird at the same time.

I apologise if you were expecting more photos but there is only so much I need to subject you all to ;-)

 

Chengdu - a little bit of everything (and farewell China)

Friday 31 October 2025

It was very wet first thing so we needed to find an indoor activity.  JC really wanted to visit the Sanxingdui Museum which hosts a plethora of bronze masks, but it was an hour+ each way on the metro and pretty niche in my eyes (history museums were one thing, but an ancient mask museum was a notch up I wasn't born for).  So we compromised and went to the Chengdu Museum. We spent most of our time on the ancient history floor which did have a bronze mask or two. 

I really was quite ancient history-ed out by this stage.  On the left is a bronze zhan from the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period (770-221 BCE).  I liked the stone rhino.

And there were plenty of pottery figurines.

After a couple of hours here we headed down to a food street next to Chengdu Wu Hou Shrine.  It was touristy (said we the tourists) but it was interesting to shuffle through.  I do like an old door.  I found some random veggie skewers to eat which I thought would be hot but they were raw.  Crunchy lunchy.

We enjoyed a stroll around Wu You Shrine/Temple.  The gardens were remarkably peaceful on the whole, as the tourists congregated around the main entrance and a bit of the red wall.

We left and walked up through a local park then realised we couldn't get out except by retracing our steps, so we had to loop back via the food alley.

We headed up to People's Park to a tea room JC remembered from his last visit, spotting live fish for sale on a bridge as we passed.  We could have also picked up a live terrapin from the vendor.

Heming Tea Room was a large, busy establishment. We settled in and people-watched, which was a lot of fun.  

We'd gone for a cheap cuppa, 30 RMB each (~£3) but if you wanted to splash out you could be served your drink by the tea master from a long spouted kettle, which was certainly a performance.    

You could also get your ear wax removed whilst you sat. We saw this happen in other tea houses and is definitely a thing to do over a cuppa.

People's Park was a pleasant stroll.

Next up was 'wide and narrow alley', which are 3 parallel pedestrian alleys crammed full of (mainly) tourist shops  It was heaving with tourists, unsurprising for a Friday evening, but glitzy sparkly ;-).  Chengdu is famous for its panda breeding centre so there are pandas everywhere.  JC discovered a Starbucks in all the hustle and bustle and popped in for 15 mins of peace.

Once we'd had our filled of tourist retail we hopped on the metro to find a confluence of rivers that looked worth visiting.  I did enjoy the metro card designs (I think I blogged similar excitement last year).

The Jinjiang River was nicely lit up and quite picturesque.  Parts of the waterfront were rammed with Chinese celebrating Halloween - there were some amazing costumes!

 

The walkways and vista was certainly fun to explore.

As it was our last night, we splashed out on a final hot pot.  I was fascinated by the DNA-esque look of the tofu. 

Saturday 01 November 2025

Home time.  For once, we didn't have an early start so pottered around the Wenshu Monastery for a bit before catching the train to the airport.  We checked in OK and, once on the plane, discovered we had been allocated two seats in a row of 3, with the middle seat empty.  How lovely. It became incredibly handy when, very early into the flight, I chucked yoghurt over myself, the seat and seatbelt: I had to move across to the empty seat as mine was too wet to sit on.  I took about 6 hours to dry too.

Our in-flight map got stuck over Russia - we were in our final descent, it stated "landing in 26 minutes" but the display suggested we were nowhere near!  Never trust a map...

Chengdu - Wenshu Monastery

Thursday 30 October 2025

We spent our last couple of days in Chengdu, as we were flying directly from there back to London on the Saturday.  We caught an early Didi to Lanzhou airport, capturing glimpses of the Yellow River as we went, and sailed through departures like royalty.  There were numerous staff who were keen to walk us through every stage.

Like Lanzhou, Chengdu is a large metropolis and it took us 1.5 hours via fast/slow metro lines to reach our hotel.  Unlike Lanzhou, and every other place we'd stayed this trip, the skies were grey and it was drizzly.  Blimey!  We had to dig out the gortex coats which hadn't seen an airing since the UK.  

We stayed in the same place JC slept ~10 years ago near the Wenshu Buddhist Monastery.  It was a beautiful old building and by far the oldest and authentic accommodation we’d stayed in during our whole trip [there was super little choice when booking hotels in western China from UK].

We visited the neighbouring Wenshu Buddhist Monastery, which is still inhabited by monks.  Worshipers were circling the pagoda as we passed.

This was the main prayer hall, on a Thursday afternoon.  NB - we popped in Saturday morning just before we left - the queues!

I do love a Chinese roof.

The monastery had a lovely tea garden.  The loose tea was put into the cup and you used the porcelain lid as a strainer when you drank.  There was a knack to it, but it was easy to pick up. 

Then I wanted to find a river so we walked to the local one.  Sadly it wasn’t terribly exciting so we did a large loop back to our hotel.  It was nice to get some km under our feet though and I found a cute caterpillar.  

I had definitely run out of steam by this stage - not for today, but for the holiday.  The impending re-entry to the UK was playing on my mind as I’d been watching things stack up in the inbox awaiting my action on return (and this was just my personal email).  We were meant to be going to see the largest old Buddha in the world tomorrow, but I cancelled our planned trip.  Although it sounded magnificent, it involved over 2 hours travel each way plus hours of queuing and fighting crowds - quite simply not the end I needed for the trip. 

We dined out locally in a smoky restaurant - smoking in food establishments is quite the norm here - then headed for some much needed rest.