The 33rd year of the Beijing Marathon yesterday saw 30,000 participants run underneath a blue sky and a beautiful little sun. Those who completed the full course started west from Tiananmen and then turned north toward Olympic Green, with Ethiopian Tadese Tola winning the men’s race with a new event record time of 2:07:16 and China’s Zhang Yingying winning the women’s title in 2:31:19. By all accounts, it was glorious.

Leave it to the media to point this out though:

“Runners left quite a bit behind,” says the CCTV news anchor.

Don’t worry, it’s a non-story. Trash is left behind at marathons the world over, and one eyewitness’s statement about a lack of refuse bins was countered by another eyewitness’s statement about how it only takes an hour to clean up all the litter.

This is more amusing:

A Great Wall of runners who somehow didn’t perspire enough while running a marathon. A Yellow River runs wild in the heart of Beijing.

You know who we really feel for in that above picture? The runner in red, who’s probably getting a healthy dose of urine on the top of his shoe. If ever there were a time for a funnel…

UPDATE, 6:49 pm: Below are two more pictures. “A participant surnamed Zhou, who claims to have run the Beijing Marathon numerous times, said that runners urinate in the streets almost every year,” accoring to Global Times. Organizers probably should have placed some porta potties along the route, as Area Man points out in the comments.

So much for that newly issued Chinese tourism etiquette guidebook.

Remember? That 64-page thing released by the National Tourism Administration in China, supposed to go into effect on October 1?

This parent and child — which the website Coconuts Hong Kong says are from the mainland – must have missed the memo, because the child sure appears to be urinating in public. Give him some credit though: at least it’s into a trash bin.

This was taken inside a subway station in Hong Kong right in front of a sign that appears to say “No Peeing.” (I can’t tell for certain, but wouldn’t it be great if really was a “No Peeing” sign?)

Is this better or worse than the iPee boy in the Hong Kong Apple store?

The tourism guidebook may need updating already.

Piss and Tell: Golden Week tourists in all their glory (Coconuts Hong Kong)

A picture of a small child peeing into a bucket inside an Apple Store in Hong Kong has gone viral, hashtagged — what else? — iPee5.

This being the Internet, people are angry, and wildly speculating that the mother probably didn’t wash her hands before, you know, swiping the screens on a bunch of Apple products.

Of course, it’s not just in Hong Kong where this kind of thing happens. It happens in Beijing — and everywhere. In March, a Redditor exposed urine stains on the seats next to the kids table in American Apple outlets. “Pee balls,” they were called.

Anyway, but that’s over there. Here’s a larger picture of the Hong Kong iPeer, via @BadCanto:

And one more… the start of a photoshopping contest?

iPee:

A key to entrepreneurial success is being unafraid to be great while also being unafraid to fail. The “pee straight funnel,” without a doubt, will fail as a commercial item — but that doesn’t mean it’s not great.

Last month, Shenzhen issued an ordinance — largely symbolic, we figured — requiring men to pee inside the urinals in public bathrooms, presumably because men, for sundry reasons, have difficulty doing this. Those who continue to fail at this basic life task may be fined up to 100 yuan.

Recently, migrant workers in the city have sought to capitalize on this. Check out the “pee straight funnel” (via The Nanfang), which, well, just look at it. Note how long it is. By using it, you’re basically escorting your urine on a red carpet from its source to its destination. Not one drop spilled. (Unless you pull out early, so don’t do that.)

It costs only 10 yuan per unit. We don’t think you should reuse it — where would you store it? — but that’s a possibility.

You could also, you know, take a step closer to the urinal. But there’s a vicious cycle at work here, of course, since the closer you get to the urinal, the more likely it is you’ll step on urine; the farther you stand, the more urine accumates underneath.

A funnel. That’s the answer.

In many places, urinals are more of an idea, an abstraction, than a physical thing. How else to explain, in many of the more derelict public facilities, the puddles of urine everywhere, the sticky floor, the rivulets of pee that flow in circles?

A city official in Shenzhen wants to change this. He wants people to pee into the goddamn receptacle, and he’s willing to make foolish proposals in order to get his point across. AFP reports that this unnamed official has proposed issuing 100 yuan fines for missing the mark. It’s an utterly unenforceable law that is all symbolic, nothing more, but it got us thinking: if people were made to become self-conscious about their business, would they improve? Would they be shamed into peeing better?

Shame works, right? Let’s see…

• Counterpoint 1: Outrage After Tourists Caught Publicly Peeing In Beijing’s Summer Palace 
• Counterpoint 2: Does Peeing In Public Fit With Galaxy Soho’s Architecture?
• Counterpoint 3: This Woman In Macau Will Do Her Business On The Curb, And What Are You Gonna Do About It? Take A Picture?
• Counterpoint 4: Man Casually Pees Off Beijing Subway Platform On A Monday Afternoon
• Counterpoint 5, et al.: Man Pees Out Bus Window, Because It Beats The Alternative

The list goes on for a while. But what does social media think?

But… but…

Unrealistic expectation, much?

This, by the way, is a much better idea:

See that dot (fly) in there? It gives people a target, and has been empirically proven to work.

Apple Daily has a skit about this, of course. It’s in Cantonese, but graphics like this speak for itself:

Here’s the latest from the chronicles of bad places to relieve yourself. Last week, one Cao Liping spied about a dozen tourists peeing on a vine-covered wall near the 17 Arches Bridge in Beijing’s Summer Palace. Angered, he snapped the above photo and posted it to Sina Weibo, where it predictably triggered uproar. CCTV and People’s Daily are among the those who have run with this story.

Initial spectulation was that there weren’t enough toilets in the Summer Palace, but a park staffer quickly refuted that notion, pointing out that there are actually 150 public bathrooms in the park. In fact, there was one just a hundred steps away from where these fellas were peeing.

Worse, according to Cao, after these five were done, others stepped up — in groups — to do their business, even though they could plainly see that they were being photographed. An act of defiance against civility? We’ve seen it before.

Here’s one of the many news reports on the incident:

BJC reader Phoebe sends this preliminary report from this past weekend’s Craft Beer Festival at Galaxy Soho:

A bratty five-year-old looking kid yelled “wo yao niao niao!” at his parents who immediately picked him up, pulled his pants down and held him over a bin, a foot away from where we were eating and drinking. The father laughed as I took photos and told him how disgusting it is and that there is a bathroom right through the door behind him. His response: “My kid doesn’t like bathrooms, he’s afraid.”

That kid is going to have problems when he grows older. He might turn into this kid, who will turn into this adult.

By the way, a common misconception is that we at BJC disapprove of kids urinating in public, whether over trash cans, on curbs, or into paper cups. In actuality, we love it, and can’t think of anything more likely to make one lift his or her eyebrows, tilt the head, and think, How interesting. We’re all about the interesting things, of course.

We slightly frown upon shitting in public though.

More Craft Beer Festival round-up later this week. The headline, of course, is a reference to this.

A 22-year-old man jumped out of a moving bus on a Sichuan province freeway and died, reports Chengdu Business Daily via Global Times. Why did he jump?

“He asked me to park the bus because he needed to pee,” said the bus driver, Liu Renzi, who was en route to Ziyang from Chengdu that day. “I asked him to wait because it’s not safe to park on the freeway. I told him that there was a restroom at Shiqiao service zone, which would take about 10 minutes to reach.”

Ten minutes from a service zone, but the passenger really had to use the bathroom, and 10 minutes was unacceptable.

Liu said that the man, Chen Jie, hit Liu’s head with a plastic water bottle after his request to stop was rejected, then returned to his seat by the left window in the last row. Shortly after, he opened the window and leapt out.

Chen Jie has earned his Darwin Award. The above picture is of his family grieving, but the woman in the middle there may has well be face-palming.

The incident, of course, is the obverse of the one we saw in Shanghai in March, when foreigners forced a driver to pull over so they could pee on the side of the highway.

We may have said this before, but if you really need to relieve yourself, just do it. Open the window and pee out the back or something. No one ever slipped on urine and died (to the best of our knowledge). No one ever saw a man taking a leak and have a heart attack (again, to the best of our knowledge). But now we know: someone has died from jumping out of a bus window because the driver wouldn’t take a pit stop. Now we know.

“No video this time,” we said on Tuesday about the latest public pooper in Shenzhen.

We were wrong.

Above, the video.

“Not only was this particular woman indiscriminate when it comes to choosing defecatory locations,” writes Shanghaiist’s James Griffiths, “she’s also lightning fast.” You would be too, eh?

Here’s the news report on this, because of course you want to know what other passengers think about the incident (they feel uncomfortable):

Youku vids of the above:

Remember the above? The picture appeared on Sina Weibo in March, with the accompanying message:

A group of laowai collectively pee on a Shanghai overpass, while smirking!  Can only say __ doesn’t have national boundaries! Please fill in the blank!

The incident was investigated, with police eventually saying no punishment would come to the foreigners due to a lack of relevant laws.

Well, it turns out that’s not completely true. As reported by Shanghai Daily, two of the six foreigners pictured above have been fined — a whopping total of 100 yuan each. The ruling was historic:

It was the first time that foreigners were punished for urinating in public. Local rules state that urinating and defecating in public will incur fines of 100 and 200 yuan respectively.

Netizens aren’t amused.

“Finally I see punishment, but only 100 yuan for peeing on the elevated highway while parking in the wrong place costs 200?” questioned a Weibo user “bhzlittle.”

“They should be punished to clean the city’s elevated highways,” complained another.

Four of the six foreigners apparently have already left the country. They escaped the 100-rmb fine, equivalent to about one and a half cocktails in a posh bar.

The two who were caught were a Dane and a German.

In a final interesting twist, as noted by Eric Fish, People’s Daily reprinted a separate Shanghai Daily article on this incident, only changed “urinating” to “pissing.”

Two of the six foreigners who were caught pissing openly on an elevated highway indowntown Shanghai in March had been identified by authorities and fined 100 yuaneach, officials said today.

Interesting style guide they have over there. Update, 2:37 pm: Or maybe Shanghai Daily edited out “pissing” on the sly. There will be no further updates on this.

Netizens slam 100-yuan fine to 2 foreigners for peeing on road (Shanghai Daily)

Yes, we too are beginning to suffer from scat fatigue, but… meh. We sort of have a theme going, and it’d be a shame to neglect it.

This one comes via The Nanfang:

A picture of a woman pooping on a platform in a station along Shenzhen’s Luobao Line has already been forwarded by three respected, Shenzhen-based microblogs: Shenzhen’s Big and Small Issues, Shenzhen Metropolitan Round-up, and Baoan Life.

No video this time. UPDATE, 5/24, 1:10 pm: Just kidding, here’s video! (Also embedded below.)

Someday, no doubt, I will be the one who needs to take a dump when there aren’t any bathrooms nearby, and a picture will find its way onto the Internet. It will be funny in all the saddest ways.

Woman takes a shit on the platform of Shenzhen subway station (The Nanfang)

What is a public sphere space? Who belongs? And what are the things that one can do in this place?

Poop?

In this video, a middle-aged woman, on an elevator in Shenzhen’s Subway Line 3, suddenly feels the call of nature, so she drops trou and takes a dump.

Her companion, a middle-aged male, stands beside her and holds a button to keep the elevator doors closed. Neither clean up the mess, because, you know, who cleans up their own poop, right?

They probably didn’t suspect a camera was rolling, and that footage would be posted online, and watched at least 79,000 times within a day. Southern News reports that the Shenzhen Metro Line Company has confirmed the veracity of the footage. The incident appears to have happened on April 22 at 3:14 pm.

We’re not sure whether this particular subway station had a bathroom. After a similar pooping incident in the Guangzhou subway — albeit involving a schoolboy, not an adult woman — Metro authorities took the step of publicizing via social media all of the bathroom locations in its underground network.

Also, it’s up for debate whether pooping in an elevator is better or worse than pooping on a train itself. Let that debate commence.

(H/T Alicia)

On April 19, 2012, a 41-year-old woman in Haikou, Hainan province was picking up her child when a 42-year-old shop owner confronted her because her bike was blocking his store. What happened next, one would never wish on his worst enemy:

The two parties soon fell into a quarrel, and then a physical confrontation. The furious woman called her husband and brother to come help her, which resulted in a more violent fist fight.

Wait for it…

During the fight, the middle aged woman manged to grab the man’s testicles, and squeezed them until he finally collapsed on the ground. The man was immediately rushed to hospital, but unfortunately died there despite of efforts.

Rocket News 24 is now reporting that the woman’s trial began on April 8, and the verdict may come down to one line:

As she held the man in a nut lock, witnesses reported her to have shouted, “I’ll squeeze it to death, you’ll never have children again!”

Apparently she didn’t know how right she was, because soon after the man went into shock from the pain. Paramedics rushed to the scene and treated the victim but he was soon pronounced dead.

With the trial ongoing, the result may hinge on the woman’s alleged statement of “squeeze it to death.” Depending on how it’s interpreted, she may be convicted of murder.

The woman is charged with committing a capital offense that is “especially cruel.” The potential sentence is not less than 10 years, up to life imprisonment or death.

(H/T Reece Ayers)

There’s phallic — the Washington Monument, skyscrapers, ice cream drumsticks — and then there’s penis. Behold the above, purportedly the new headquarters of People’s Daily. As Hug China explains:

Pictures of the People’s Daily new headquarters that is under furnishing at the moment have gone viral on Chinese social media. One of the picture taken by a netizen from a special angle on April 11 when the top part of the building was framed with construction racks makes the construction look like a colossal human male genital.

Of course, it’s all a matter of camera angle, as many have pointed out. But why be a spoilsport? The People’s Daily is a colossal dick.

Netizens, naturally, are having a bit of fun with this. Here’s the Penis Building, via Weibo, juxtaposed with the CCTV Tower off Beijing’s Third Ring Road in the central business district:

The CCTV tower is nicknamed Big Underpants. What nicknames do we have for the People’s Daily? Suggestions welcome.

Does this make any sense? Via Shanghai Daily:

The six Danes who got off from a bus on the middle of an elevated road to urinate in full view of the public are likely to be let off but the bus driver could face a 200 yuan fine.

Also, six demerit points. (A driver only has 12 to spare before he loses his license.)

So, why can’t the foreigners — Danes, reportedly — be punished for doing this on Saturday afternoon?

Police said it could not punish the Danes as there was no regulation against urinating on an elevated road.

That’s rich in its specificity. What if they took a leak on an off-ramp? Punishment then?

Of course, we all knew that no punishment would come. We’ve seen too much indecency — hell, much of it just down the road in Sanlitun during after-hours — to hold any misguided notion that civility can be enforced.

But the bus driver? The man who, after the incident, told TV reporters that the foreigners grabbed his steering wheel, causing him to “almost hit other cars”?

Police said yesterday that in times of emergencies, drivers should get off the elevated road from the nearest ramp.

Scapegoat, his name. What a pissing shame.

Six Danes escape punishment (Shanghai Daily via People’s Daily)