Chamber pots, shared loos and DIY plumbing: China’s toilet revolution exposes social inequalities

By Deljana Iossifova, Professor, University of Manchester
Qi Liu, Postdoctoral fellow, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Urbanisation in China tends to be depicted in terms of towering skyscrapers and multilane highways – the city reaching upwards and outwards. Not much thought is given to the vast, but less eye-catching, urban infrastructure that shapes and is shaped by the everyday lives of its citizens – such as toilets and sewers.

Until as late as the 2010s, chamber pots were still a common feature of urban life in China. Families shared wooden matong buckets or enamel tanyu, and emptied them at communal disposal…

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