An Interesting Experience in China

I like to go on vacation every once in a while. My most recent trip to China was met with a rather interesting experience. I don’t speak any of the Chinese languages, and the reason I decided to go to China was because my ex-girlfriend at the time was Chinese and wanted to return home to visit her family. We ended up booking a two week trip out to China to stay in both Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

First off, Chinese food is nothing like the Chinese food in America, and as a result, I would find myself eating less food. I think I was sick, but I wasn’t really feeling sick — I just had a major loss of appetite for the first week of being in China. One of the other things about the food is that the meat was about 90% bone, and 10% meat. I don’t like obstacles or choking hazards in my food when I eat. When I did eat, I took the safe route and stuck mostly to fruits and vegetables.

My ex was getting frustrated with me because she would offer me many different varieties of food, but I would tell her that I wasn’t hungry. Her family was becoming curious and kept asking her why I wasn’t eating, but I was ignorant of this at the time.

The trip to China was great. My ex got to visit a lot of her family members that she hadn’t seen for a while, she got to go shopping at stores that actually had her size, and she got to visit her hometown and stay in her old house. We also went to some extravagant restaurants once I got my appetite back which included both dimsum and hot pot.

The story takes a twist when we booked a trip out to the Longsheng Rice Terraces. This was quite the journey from where we were down in Guangzhou. We booked an Airbnb out there, and I had the most delicious beef fried rice I’ve ever had in my life. Everything was so fresh, and I have eaten a lot of rice since, but I’ve never found another meal that matched what I ate at the rice terraces.

The story begins on our travels to the rice terraces. We took a bus to get to the train station, and when we arrived, we needed to wait for about 2 hours to get on the train to go north. We had been in China for about 5-6 days, and when we got to the train station, I started feeling really uncomfortable. I needed to poop.

I spoke with my ex to tell her I needed to use the restroom, and she pointed out the restroom, and ran for them. When I got into the stall, there was no toilet to sit on. That luxury was gone. It was nice to have because my ex’s house had one instead of a hole in the ground. My face was covered in sweat, and I was prarie-dogging my first poop since arriving to China. This thing was coming out. The stall had a hole in the ground and a trash can in the corner of the stall, so I had to squat down over the hole and do my business. I took one of the top 3 biggest poops of my life in that stall, likely because it was the first time I’ve pooped since arriving to China.

When I was finished, I looked around for the toilet paper, and there was none. No seashells either. I looked over at the waste basket in the corner, and it was filled with used toilet paper. This is when I realized that in rural China, you’re required to bring your own toilet paper, and you’re not supposed to put it in the hole. This was news to me. Out of natural instinct, I would have taken off a sock, but I was walking around in flip-flops and wasn’t wearing any socks. I did what I had to do. I reached into the waste basket to find the cleanest pieces of toilet paper I could find, and I wiped my butt with it. I was very fortunate that my log was clean cut, and didn’t require many tissues for cleaning up.

It’s a good thing I didn’t have to flush, because something would have gotten clogged. I felt incredibly disgusted with my experience. When I left the restroom, I found my ex standing right outside waiting for me to hand me some toilet paper, because she had realized that I left to go to the restroom without it. Overall it was a great trip to China, and I would recommend anyone goes there to visit at least once, but remember to always have tissues on you as you’ll never know if you go to a restroom where it’s expected that you bring your own.