Have you ever paced the city streets, searching for that elusive toilet? Maybe you can access one at a McDonald's outlet or a hotel or an office building. But imagine what it is like for the taxi driver? He has to find a parking lot first.

With the help of 16 local drivers, aged between 42 to 54 years, research-ers at the Shanghai Institute of Surveying and Mapping will be able to publish the city's first cabbie-oriented map by the year's end.

"The map will also be of great help to local residents and foreign tourists when they need to locate the city's public lavatories, major round-the-clock drugstores and gasoline stations," said Jiang Qian, an institute researcher in charge of the map project.

According to Jiang, the map, which will probably have an English version, will pinpoint the location of the city's 500-plus public toilets, 124 drugstores under the aegis of Huashi Pharmacy Co. Ltd. and popular gas stations in Shanghai and neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

According to the Shanghai Taxi Administration Office, the city has more than 40,000 taxies with a total of 80,000 cabbies, who have constantly complained about the inconvenience of finding toilets on the streets.

Being aware of the problem, Jiang and the other institute researchers earlier tried to draw such a map to help the hapless cabbies but failed because they were short of long-term helpers.

"Many public toilets have been relocated or closed as a result of urban construction," Jiang said.

Wang Weixiong and 15 other taxi drivers from Shanghai Dazhong Taxi Service Co. voluntarily spent their leisure time over the past 2 1/2 years searching and collecting the latest locations of public toilets, drugstores and gas pumps.

"The idea of this special map occurred to me on March 21, 1999, when a female cabbie asked me to 'keep watch' for her outside a male loo after she failed to find a women's toilet," said Wang.

Soon after, Wang led a voluntary team to search across the city's downtown areas and tortuous residential lanes to pinpoint the exact addresses of public toilets as well as the day-night drugstores and gas stations.

( eastday.com September 10, 2002 )