Living Abroad

If you’ve been teaching in China, then you’ve probably used the so-called squatting toilet. Abhorred my many foreigners, this toilet forces you to squat down when going number two, greatly reducing the comfort of your bathroom visit. Some say it’s a backward and demeaning practice, others laud the squatting toilet for its naturalist approach to bowel movements. Considering the many debates we’ve had with both foreign and Asian colleagues and friends about the benefits and drawbacks of the squatter, we decided to delve into the world of toilets and look deeper into (1) The history of the western toilet (2) The proposed health benefits of the squatting toilets.

China’s massive growth spurt over the last 20 years has been well popularized by the international media. A GDP growth rate that has hovered around 10% since Deng Xiao Ping’s Economic reforms in the early 1980s. China consumes twice as much steel as Japan, USA and Europe combined. China will build 50,000 sky scrapers by 2025, the equivalent of 10 New York Cities. More people will move from the country side to the city between now and 2030 than the entire current US population, the biggest and fastest urban migration in the history of the planet. In the period between 1981 and 2010 approximately 680 million Chinese people were lifted above the poverty line.

Yes it’s finally that time, the event football (that’s soccer for you sodden Americans out there) fans around the world eagerly wait for is finally here….the FIFA World Cup. Every four years a nation is united and collectively holds its breathe in anticipation, giving the chance for players to carve themselves a reputation amongst the games immortal heroes, or collapse under the relentless pressure of an expecting nation on the biggest of world stages.