'Toilet culture' on display at theme park

A man uses an open-air urinal at Foreigner Street, a free-entry urban amusement park in Chongqing.[Photo by Deng Rui/ China Daily]

Colorful street urinal that exposes its users is a feature at Foreigner Street.

Photos of Chinese men "doing their business", almost completely exposed, at a colorful street urinal in Chongqing have recently gone viral online, drawing derisive attention at home and abroad.

The urinal is a bold creation at the kitschy Foreigner Street, or Yangren Jie, a free-entry urban amusement park. The park management describes it as a "British style" urinal that can also be found in Amsterdam.

With four urinals on each of two stands, eight men can urinate in public at the same time. Only an arc-shaped plastic section covers the men's waist area.

Huang Jian, 21, on a sightseeing trip with two friends, stopped by the urinal, which is near a busy food and entertainment complex and the only entrance to the cable cars.

"I saw reports about it days ago. I've never seen a public toilet like this before, so I just faked a photo with myself peeing in the urinal, because I don't have the courage to really answer nature's call here," Huang said. "It's fun and I will probably post these photos in my WeChat moments."

Chongqing Meixin Group, the developer of the park in the major southwestern city, said the urinals are just the latest addition to its display of global toilet culture.

The open-air urinal "is more of a tourist attraction", said Yang Xiaoyong, of the developer's planning department. "We believe most people will appreciate it rather than to use it, except in an emergency."

Opened in 2006, Foreigner Street has successfully grabbed domestic and international headlines with its comical and exotic architecture. It boasts the world's largest toilet, which can accommodate 2,000 people at the same time, Venetian canals, a crooked pedestrian street reminiscent of San Francisco's famed Lombard Street, a tree house and toilets in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid.

In 2009, the park built China's first sex-themed display, but authorities shut it down shortly after it opened, believing the nude sculptures and paintings were too explicit.

Chen Wankang, 63, who lives in the neighborhood, first noticed the open-air toilet a few months ago and wasn't put off by its design.

"Although there is a normal public toilet downstairs, it's a little far and sometimes crowded. So I choose this one if I am in a hurry. I've used it five or six times so far," he said.

The park's management, aware that toilet gets more use during busy festivals and holidays, is making one concession to greater decency. "Now we are considering adding shields to block it from the children's amusement park nearby," Yang said.