Toilet in a Glass House

The Philip Johnson Glass House is one of the most famous houses in America. Its walls are made entirely of glass, and inside there are no walls to break your view from one side of the house to the other. There is only one place you cannot look into from the outside, and that is the bathroom. The bathroom is in a circular enclosure of brick on the inside of the house. It was a revolutionary idea to build a house that is walled completely in glass. However to some people, namely architects in China, Johnson didn’t go far enough. Why not make the bathroom walls out of glass too?

Now, I know what you are thinking. Usually the types of activities that you like to perform in the bathroom you like to perform without an audience, so it really would make sense to have an opaque enclosure. But evidently there millions of people who would disagree with you. In China I have come across countless bathrooms that are built with windows in the door or windows on an inner wall.

I remember staying in a nice apartment in a coastal city for a few days with friends. This apartment must have been pricy, being within walking distance of some of the nicest parts of the city and having the best location on the building. Not only did it have good surroundings, but it was nice inside too, its interior design having been professionally done. When you walked inside, you would probably notice two things immediately. The first thing you would notice was the abstract nude on the wall over the plasma TV. A large portion of the canvas was gilt, so it was really shiny. Plus, it had a bold checkerboard pattern on it, which immediately arrested one’s attention, very striking. And then, of course, there was the nude, the gilt abstract nude, sitting on the checkerboard. I never managed to divine the meaning of that piece; I always was an oaf when it comes to art. But anyway, after you had blushed and looked away from the artwork, the second thing you would see was the bathroom at the end of the hallway, especially if someone were in it. Pretty much the entire end of the hallway was glass. The wooden bathroom door was on the left and had windowpanes from bottom to top. The panes were, mercifully, frosted with a light frost or with those little textured snowflakes or something. Behind the glass door was the sink. Then to the right of the door was a wall of glass brick. At the builders’ supply store there are different kinds of glass brick, probably with names like “Ice Land” and “Ocean Cube.” Well, these were the “Keep no Secrets” glass bricks. Behind the glass bricks was the toilet.

My friends, most of them American, were puzzled and distressed by this bathroom. How were they to carry on their business in front of these floor-to-ceiling glass bricks? The regular inhabitants of this house, on the other hand, were accustomed to this open-bathroom concept. Once, as I was walking from the living room down the hallway to the bedroom I was staying in, I was horrified to see the figure of a person undressing very close to the door. It was a slight figure and was wearing dark blue undies, which were pressed tightly against the window. It turns out that the figure was that of the young boy who lived in the apartment. One of my friends told me later that it was the boy I had seen because this friend of mine had come into the hallway on another occasion and had had the same scare.

My foreign friends were a little more careful in their use of the bathroom and put much thought into how they should conduct their activities. It was suggested by some that we should put a test subject in the bathroom, who would then walk around nearer and farther from the door and the glass bricks and shout out their position. “One foot from the door!” they would shout. “Two feet from the door! Three feet from the door!” And those assembled outside to watch would consider the amount of visual distortion caused by the glass related to the distance from the door to see at what distance it might be safe to change clothes, pick one's nose or do other potentially embarrassing activities. Maybe we could work out a mathematical formula, they suggested. Nevertheless, such an experiment was unnecessary, others said, because one can clearly see the toilet through the glass and clearly see if someone were sitting on it. In such a small room the distortion caused by those little snowflakes was insufficient to make them feel comfortable doing anything anywhere in there, they said.

Therefore, the only solution was to erect a physical barrier of some sort so that one could use the restroom with peace of mind. When I walked in the first time, I looked around carefully to strategize how I would use the room. Beside the shower there was a big wooden tub that was about waist high. With that in front of the glass bricks, there would be something in front of the toilet. However, people outside could still see the color of your shirt and so would know who was in there and what they were doing, more than you want them to know. The solution: the shower curtain. By pulling the shower curtain and spreading it out along the tub, you could hide yourself completely, yet this was difficult to do because the curtain barely stretched that far and would fall back off the tub easily, leaving you scrambling to replace it. I snooped around but never found any clothespins anywhere to pin the curtain to the tub. “Anybody know how to say ‘clothespin’ in Chinese?”

That bathroom was probably one of the worst offenders that I’ve seen against an American’s desire for privacy in the privy. But there are many other examples I could share not only from city houses but also from countryside houses. One countryside house that I visited really caught my fancy. If I could buy a vacation house in the countryside, this would be it. It had a covered gate in true Chinese style, and inside the gate was a wonderful little courtyard. On one side of the courtyard was a garden, the other a storage building and the pet cow’s bedroom and opposite the gate was the house. The house had four large rooms, kitchen, master bedroom (with the kang), garage (of sorts) and guest bedroom. It was a beautiful little brick house with a red tile roof. I learned with sorrow yesterday that it is slated to be demolished to make way for a new highway. When the highway is built to ferry spoiled city slickers as quickly as possible past the countryside, it will have been at great cost to the world. Nevertheless, as wonderful as this little house was, its bathroom design was intolerable.

There were two toilets. One was outside of the courtyard wall. The other was in the pet cow's bedroom. When you think of a toilet, you are probably thinking of a sleek porcelain bowl like the one that you sit on to read the local newspaper. Forget that image. These toilets were just rectangular holes in the ground. You might think that this is awful, but actually it’s not. Many people prefer this kind of squat toilet over the porcelain bowl sitting kind because . . . (how do you explain this? tactfully?) . . . well, suffice it to say that some people like it better. Plus it’s much better for public restrooms because it’s more sanitary: you don’t have to touch the seat.

My grief wasn’t with the toilets themselves. The trouble was with their location. The first one was truly an outhouse because it was outside the courtyard as if it were a boon to weary travelers. It was to the left of the gate and was enclosed on three sides with brick and had a kind of cornstalk roof. The cow spent her days out there beside the toilet under a lean to, so you could talk to her whenever you went out to use the restroom. She was a good companion, but I was always afraid that she would try to eat the privy roof while I was in there. The entrance side, which was completely open with no door, was facing the courtyard entrance. You know how a lot of campuses have security shacks at the entrance? And security guards sit there at the entrance of the campus and can see everyone who goes through the gate and can likewise be seen by everyone passing through? That’s the way this toilet was. You could squat there like a diminutive security guard and shout out a hearty “hullo!” to anyone who came to knock on the courtyard gate.

The other toilet inside the courtyard was all the way in the left corner and shared the same pit with the outside toilet. This one was a little more private, but was still had no door and was in full view of whoever was in the courtyard. It was odd that during the day the family (and guest) would use the toilet outside the courtyard and at night use the one inside the courtyard. In short, we would go wherever the cow was.

Like I said above, this was a beautiful little courtyard house. There was nothing wrong with it. I just think that if I were to move there, I would spend about ten minutes to construct a little cornstalk wall for each of the privies so you could feel a little more at ease.

The last example I want to give of an open bathroom is in a business that some of my expat friends and I often frequent. This restroom also has a hole-in-the-ground toilet, but this one is porcelain, can flush and is connected to the sewer. I haven’t heard any of my friends complain about the hole-in-the-ground style toilet here, so I think they are accustomed to it. This restroom is small, a one holer. The door is a wooden door and, you guessed it, has a top-to-bottom frosted window.

Though the toilet itself doesn’t seem to bother people, it’s obvious the door does. Some expats like to go into the restroom with the light off. Enough light comes through the door from the outside for the person to do without it. However, this is an undesirable situation too because when the light is off, it appears from the outside that the restroom is unoccupied. The lock doesn’t really work, so I can only imagine that the person inside is nervously hoping that no one will just trot on in.

Once I was standing outside the restroom talking to somebody, and a lady came, wanting to use the restroom. She asked me, “Is anybody in the bathroom?” I said, “Go ahead and have a look through the window.” She didn’t take my advice.

Having a window in the bathroom door might seem to be advantageous for whoever is outside. That way they can know if the bathroom is occupied or not. Still I don’t think I really want to accidentally see anybody during their alone time.

Despite having lived in China for a few years and becoming accustomed to many things here, I still do not prefer the open-bathroom concept. I would side with the architectural school that says Philip Johnson was wise to include at least the bathroom of the Glass House in a very opaque brick cylinder.

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Note to my Chinese friends and family: Please don’t think I’m mocking. I’m not. There is nothing wrong with the bathrooms in China generally speaking. I admit that bathrooms in China really were funny to me as an American when I first came there, but I don’t call myself an authority on proper bathroom design. They were funny to me only because I was not used to them. When two cultures collide, there are bound to be some chuckles from both sides. I imagine that there is plenty of things that Chinese might think are funny about American life, and I will not begrudge you your laughter.