I promised I would get to the bottom of this, and it took a while, and I almost forgot, too, but …

Back on my first full day in Beijing I noted a weird reality of the brand-new Main Press Center building — the signs posted in the men’s and women’s toilets asking users not to flush toilet paper.

Contrary to what I wrote back then, my hotel/dorm did not make the same request. Much to my relief.

However, several other Beijing Olympic venues had similar situations. No paper down the toilet. Put it in the trash can next to the toilet, instead.

What? It was something that was hard to believe, at first. Used paper … in a trash can? It was hard to comprehend … until you noticed the can next to you … and the vile odor of the place.

It made for some very foul situations.

Ultimately, here’s the deal:

China is only now getting on board with the sit-down toilet. In many areas, what Westerners often term “Turkish toilets” still predominate. And that’s just a hole in the floor that patrons are expected to squat over. Basically, something right out of the First Century.

(And even then, 2,000 years ago, the Romans had seats in their military latrines, with running water below. Anyone who has been to Hadrian’s Wall in England has seen the ruins.)

In simplest terms, the Chinese installed a batch of sit-down flush toilets — but didn’t adequately plumb for them. The water flow was feeble. Hardly anything could be carried away, and adding even a dollop of paper was putting the system at risk. Of clogs and subsequent spills.

So … the sit-down commodes in practice were hardly any advance over the squat toilets, because users were throwing soiled paper into the trash cans that sometimes weren’t emptied as often as they should have been. Especially in the heavily used bathrooms of the Main Press Center.

I was talking to an American of Chinese origin who has lived in China much of the past 10 years, and he described the situation “as seriously unsanitary.” And it was.

I mentioned in the previous post the existence of workers (I hope they weren’t unpaid volunteers) who stood around the MPC’s busiest bathrooms and were in there every few minutes emptying those deadly trash cans.

What a job.

Anyway, China … feel free to join the rest of the First World in the sanitation department. That, or don’t even bother with the sit-down toilets, if you can’t flush a few sheets of paper down them.

That was by far the weirdest single thing I encountered there. A city with 100, 200, 300 buildings of 15-plus stories … and you couldn’t put toilet paper in the toilets. Amazing.