A new set of luxurious lavatories in one of China’s poorest provinces may not always smell like flowers, but at least they kind of look like one.
The beautified toilet bloc was built by Jinzhou Agricultural Park in Guizhou province’s Anlong county in response to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s call for a “toilet revolution” to improve the standards of the country’s restrooms for tourists.
As you can see, the cubicles — well, little glass houses with their own flower gardens and fences — are arranged as petals around a central courtyard.
Aw, isn’t that nice? Not at all crappy.
Local newspaper Qianxinan Daily reported that the “eco-toilets” design represented the “characteristics of residential buildings of minority communities.”
Jinzhou Agricultural Park is part of a demonstrative zone of China’s poverty reduction program, a nationwide government effort to develop rural villages.
It was built with an investment of 450 million RMB (US$67 million) and covers an area of about 3.5 square kilometres.
A local government website bills the park as Anlong county’s “backyard” and hopes it will promote agriculture and tourism.
Launched in 2015, President Xi’s “toilet revolution” has so far seen a total of 68,000 toilets across the country upgraded, which is about 19 percent of the task to be done, according to state media.
The Chinese leader last month gave the campaign another push (almost there).
