This is a small thing that becomes a large thing at the wrong moment, and it is close to the top of the list of details first-time visitors wish someone had told them.
Where paper is and is not provided#
Reliably provided: hotels, serviced apartments, restaurants above the most basic level, department stores, newer shopping malls, airport terminals, and increasingly the newest high-speed rail stations.
Frequently not: public toilets on the street, park and temple facilities, older railway and bus stations, tourist-site toilets away from the main entrance, university and hospital buildings, and most small local restaurants.
Where paper is provided in a public toilet it is often at a communal dispenser by the entrance rather than in each cubicle — so take some on the way in. Some cities have installed dispensers that release a length of paper after scanning a QR code or a facial recognition step, which is not a system to discover mid-emergency.
Squat toilets#
Outside hotels and modern malls, expect the squat toilet (蹲厕, dūn cè) to be the default. Public facilities often have a mix, with the sit-down cubicle marked and sometimes the only one with a lock that works.
They are more hygienic than they look — nothing touches anything — but they take a little practice, and knees and Western trousers both object at first. Face the hooded end. Put anything in your back pockets somewhere else first.
Paper usually goes in the bin#
In many buildings, including plenty of hotels, plumbing is narrow and signs ask you to put used paper in the bin beside the toilet rather than flush it. This is normal and the bins are emptied frequently. Where a sign says so, follow it — blockages in an old building are worse for everyone than the alternative.
Newer hotels and modern buildings increasingly handle flushed paper without trouble, and will not have the sign.
What to carry#
- A packet of pocket tissues. Sold at every convenience store, kiosk and station in China for a few yuan. Buy several at the start and refill from any 便利店 (biàn lì diàn, convenience store).
- Hand sanitiser or wipes. Soap is as unreliable as paper, and hand dryers are common but not universal.
- A small dry bag or ziplock if you are travelling with anything that must not get wet in a cramped cubicle.
That is the whole solution. It weighs nothing and it removes the problem entirely.
Finding a toilet#
Public toilets in Chinese cities are genuinely plentiful and usually free — considerably better provided for than in most European cities. Look for the 公共厕所 (gōng gòng cè suǒ) sign or the pictogram; mapping apps list them, and metro stations, department stores and fast-food outlets are reliable fallbacks.
Standards vary enormously between a new mall and a bus-station block, so if you have a choice and no urgency, choose the mall.
For everything else worth having in the bag, see the China packing list, and for the wider set of small practical shocks that catch people in their first week, the first-time visitor's guide.