Beijing, wary of offending Olympic visitors'
sensitivities, plans to renovate 1,000 public toilets in its suburbs in 2007,
state media reported on Tuesday.
Planning officials would also strive to keep its notoriously malodorous
back-street toilets disinfected and deodorised, Xinhua news agency said.
"All the toilets should be clean, water-conserving and installed with
efficient ventilation equipment," Xinhua quoted Lu Haijun, director of the City
Planning Committee, as saying.
By the end of 2006, more than 5,580 public toilets in Beijing had reached
"the modern standard", Xinhua said, but the city's goal of ensuring a public
toilet within five minutes' walk of any location remained elusive.
To solve the problem, the Beijing municipal government would build more
toilets, and had "asked some 3,000 commercial buildings to open their toilets to
the public", Xinhua said.
