There is a reason that the city of Putian has the sound poo in the name and why it shares the first three letters with the word putrid. Even though it has over 3 million inhabitants -the same population as Australia's second largest city-Putian is considered a small village. People from all over China and residents from the city itself often asked me 'Why would you want to live in Putian?'� I was mistakenly under the impression that the smaller the city, the less pollution I would encounter. What I didn't account for was the nose pollution.

Being an English teacher, you are sometimes presented with situations where you have to put your head in your hands. But usually it is not because the stench is so revolting that you can't breathe without some sort of filter, but life in Putian was abundant with such pungent experiences.

The Chinese have a unique toileting system. My accommodation had a western style toilet where flushing was acceptable, however a large percentage of the toilets in China are squat toilets with poor plumbing and you are not allowed to flush your toilet paper. In fact, in many of these public toilets you need not worry about the act of flushing at all. There is no button to push and no water to flush with. I guess the next patron's ablutions act as a human flushing mechanism. At this point the inexperienced travellers may be wondering what to do with the toilet paper, if there is toilet paper provided- which there usually isn't. You don't do anything so foolhardy as to put your toilet paper in the toilet. Instead all toilets are provided with an open air waste paper basket. So as you squat down to take care of your business, just a few feet away from your nose is a bin filled with used toilet paper-and other sanitary or unsanitary products- from the patrons before you. It is best not to look too closely at these baskets; in fact you quickly develop the ability to turn a blind eye to the contents of these bins. Unfortunately there is no such thing as turning a blind nostril, the only thing you can do is get in and out as quick as humanly possible.

Bearing these conditions in mind, now imagine it is a sweltering summer's day and you are teaching in a classroom which is situated right next to the toilets that thousands of students a day have to excrete into. Usually, I would welcome a pleasant afternoon breeze on a warm day, but when I was teaching classes 1, 9 and 10, I found myself- for the first time in my life- turning to god and praying for not even the slightest trace of a breeze. Luckily, I only had to put up with the classes of eternal stench for 4 hours and 30 minutes a week, but I really felt sorry for the kids who, from Monday to Saturday 7am until 5pm, had to endure the pungent piss odour as a constant menace in their class. But I believe, after a few months, these students are able to develop an immunity to the constant smell of toilet.


Unfortunately, the local Putianese didn't always keep their excretion rituals in the privacy of a toilet. Not the adults of course, but the children. It is acceptable for children to poo and pee in the middle of the street, in a building, in a shop, or just about anywhere. Nappies are only rarely used by kids; instead all of the pants sold for children have a big slit in the crutch area so the kids can go anytime anywhere. In theory, I am all for this idea, I think disposable nappies are a useless waste of the worlds resources. What a wonderful way to cut down on waste. My sister managed to raise her third child without the use of one nappy. From a really young age, she would hang him over the garden or toilet and make a 'pss'� sound. Soon enough he learnt that 'psss'� meant piddle and he never had to wear a nappy. How many trees and how much water could be saved if everyone was this conscious of the environment?

The Chinese toilet training theory is almost exactly the same, with the exception that they don't bother to go to a garden or a toilet area to encourage their child to pee. Also their pissing noise is more of a whistle. I have come to affectionately know this as the 'pissing whistle'. Mostly parents just send their kids out the front of their shop to have a pee on the front step, or a turd if the time is right. I was walking up the stairs of my apartment one day and an old man was holding his grandson and encouraging him to urinate in the stairwell as he was walking up the stairs. Another time I was just about to step into a shop when I narrowly avoided stepping in a pile of shit. I would be much more supportive of this method if Chinese parents and grandparents were more conscientious of where they encouraged their kids to piss and shit. You can be almost anywhere and have to suddenly jump to avoid a squirt and worst of all the parents make no effort to direct it away from the passers by. I was once in the candy (with no wrapping) section of the supermarket and there was a mother holding a little baby whose piss was soiling the exposed food. That was a lesson in washing all food before eating it.

Occasionally in a moment of homesickness, I would head on down to MacDonald's to appease my homesick self. I was once sitting there in the corner table hoeing into my Big Mac, when what did I hear but the shrill sound of the pissing whistle. I was livid, 'MacDonald's is mine! My sacred place! My western haven!'� and here was a young mother whistling at her kid to make him piss at my feet. There are toilets in MacDonald's; she could have taken him there to piss, but no, she had to choose the only westerner in the joint to encourage her kid to piss next to. I am all for this anti-nappy method of toilet training, but my one wish is that parents would just be a little more thoughtful when choosing a place for their child to piss.

I assumed that this public toileting was only restricted to very small children in the toilet training age bracket. Perhaps it is and I was lucky enough to stumble upon an isolated case of preteen public defecation. I was walking along a main street when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a boy of about 10 years old crouched over the gutter and doing a shit. I was appalled. He was wearing a school uniform and had obviously just left school for the day, but why couldn't he have gone at school a few minutes before? Or why couldn't he have waited the few minutes to get home? And why did he choose to hang his asshole of the gutter of a main street for all to see? I will never know the answers to these Putian mysteries, but what I do know is that it is not the most charming of sights to be presented with on an afternoon stroll. Surely there is an age limit for acceptable public pooing.

Aside from the anal discharges that punctuate the pavement, the streets of Putian are littered with all manner of rubbish. So not only is there literally shit everywhere, there is also metaphorically shit everywhere. The positive side of this is that it keeps hundreds of little old ladies employed.

You see, Putian has yet to fully embrace the concept of rubbish bins, some of the bigger cities seem to have cottoned on to the idea, but poor old Putian is a few decades behind. Rubbish bins are few and far between, the main hoard, about 10 bins for a population of 3 million, were in Putian's only shopping street- the walking street. Because of this lack of bins, the city is treated like one big rubbish dump. If you don't want it, chuck it in the ground. I think the idea behind this is to make it easier for the trash cart ladies. I say ladies because I never once saw a man doing this job.

The trash cart ladies wander the streets all day, their main identifying features are their straw hats, gloves, fluorescent sleeve protectors and witch style brooms'�and not forgetting the big wooden cart full of rubbish that they are pulling behind them. They are in their own little world and as a pedestrian, if you go to overtake these ladies you have to be careful of two things. Firstly, that you don't breath too deeply or you will get a lung full of trash stench that is emanating from the cart and secondly that you don't get hit by the enthusiastic sweeping of the trash lady's broom stick.

With this system of rubbish collection, it seems that the streets are never truly trash free. There is a period of grace from about 11pm until 7am where the streets are reasonably tidy, but as soon as people get up and start walking the streets again, the whole cycle starts again. This was a difficult adjustment for me, coming from a country which prides itself on its tidy towns. I just couldn't follow the example of the shop keepers who stand at their shop entrances and throw their rubbish onto the street. I had to take my rubbish home until I could put it in a bin- which ultimately got thrown out on the street anyway, but I put it in a bag and figured that it is a little easier for the ladies to collect.

On the whole, Putian has some pretty rancid smells going on. Not always, occasionally you are treated to the perfume of incense, but the thing about smell is, it is both invisible and unpredictable. One minute you can be savouring the gourmet aromas of a Canton kitchen and the next moment you have a nose full of rotting garbage. It is all part of the travelling adventure. As you are standing there shaking your head in despair and trying not to breathe through your nose, something strange and wonderful will catch your eye on the other side of the street where the air is a little sweeter and you soon forget about the rancid odours that are enveloping you.

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