Lester Blake is happy, but not for any breakthrough in his engineering profession. His source of happiness is a clean and tidy public toilet, with an automatic hand drier, soap, and, most important of all, toilet paper.

"When I first came to Beijing in 2000, the biggest problem for me was not finding tissue paper in public toilets quite different from what it is in Germany and many other Western countries," the 40-plus German said yesterday.

The Beijing municipal government has improved the capital's public facilities vastly, thanks to the preparations for the Olympic Games.

And now about 1,700 public toilets in downtown areas and tourist sites, and more than 2,400 in and around the Games venues will provide free toilet paper and liquid soap, Guo Weidong, a Beijing municipal administration commission spokesman, said.

The arrangement, to continue throughout the Olympics and Paralympics, is part of a three-year campaign that began in 2005 to renovate and modernize Beijing's 5,333 public toilets for the Games.

Many of the public lavatories now have Western-style flushing toilets to meet the needs of foreigners, the physically challenged and the elderly, he said.

And about 8,000 workers have been trained to keep the public toilets clean and dry. After all, "public toilets reflect the living and hygiene standards of a society", Guo said.

"Beijing is working hard to make every public toilet a pleasant experience for the millions who visit the city for the Games," Yu Debin, deputy director of the Beijing tourism bureau, said.

Recalling his earlier horrifying experience, Blake says: "In 2000, I had to take a deep breath before dashing into a public toilet hold my breath with my head held high (no double entendre) never look down (to avoid the stink and the filthy floor) and then dash out. All in less than a minute."

A Beijing tourism bureau survey in 1994 showed that more than 60 percent foreign visitors were afraid of entering the city's public toilets.

All that has thankfully changed.

Wang Fangde, 68, who lives in one of Beijing's traditional siheyuan (houses with courtyards), is another man happy with that change. "A decade ago I could tell where roughly a public lavatory was because of the stink it hit you even from 20 meters."

And Wang has a wish: "I hope toilet paper is provided free even after the Olympics and Paralympics."

(China Daily July 4, 2008)