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.

Imagine being trapped in a car stuck in a culvert amid heavy rain. The water level slowly rises, starting from the knees. You call the police. One hour passes. It’s at your neck. Two hours. Your mouth. And still, no signs of rescuers…

Rains battered Shenzhen on Friday, as “47 firetrucks were put to use in 38 separate incidents as rain reached 113.8 mm,” reports The Nanfang. There were two deaths. One man was electrocuted. The other, a woman, drowned in her car, and it’s her story that’s frightfully harrowing.

At 4:40 a.m. on Friday, Tong’s husband was woken by a phone call while he was on a train back to the couple’s native Jiujiang in Jiangxi Province with their 9 year-old son. Tong told her husband, Huang Sentian, that she had already called the police because her car was trapped in a culvert and she was already up to her knees in water.

At 4:54 a.m. Huang called his wife back and she said: “The water is now almost up to my neck and I still can’t open the door. But don’t worry, I’ll come up with a solution.”

At 5:11 a.m. a school classmate of Tong called her and was told that the water had now reached her neck and that she was still waiting for emergency services.

At 5:13 a.m. Tong called her classmate back and exclaimed “How have you people not found me yet?” After realizing it wasn’t the rescuers she said “Sorry, wrong number.”

From 6:06 a.m. Tong’s phone could not be reached.

Rescuers finally found her car at 7:30 am, and removed her body 30 minutes later.

The woman’s husband is rightfully furious with the police. According to SCMP:

“The city’s poor drainage caused my wife’s death. How bad is our municipal infrastructure that a car can be submerged in just a few minutes?” Huang said.

“But it’s totally unforgivable that the policemen did little to try to save my wife. They told me they arrived there at 4.59am. But my wife was still fully conscious at the time and even made calls at 5.11am and 5.13am.”

“How could they not reach my wife? There are no acceptable excuses here,” Huang said.

Huang, picured above, said he might hire lawyers, because no official has attempted to explain to him what exactly happened.

According to a statement issued later by Nanshan district government: “Police, firemen and ambulances rushed to the scene at 4.59am after they received a report at 4.54am … But torrential water metres deep made it difficult to reach the car.”

Another car was trapped under the same underpass in 2011, SCMP continues.

The driver sat his roof until police came. Tong’s death showed that authorities did not keep their promise, the Shenzhen Evening News said.

Woman dies in Shenzhen floods after making final phone call to husband (The Nanfang)
‘How could they not reach my wife?’… (SCMP) (Images via)

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:

Last month, Conde Nast readers chose Shenzhen and Guangzhou as among the world’s unfriendliest cities. Here’s the blurb on Shenzhen, ranked 14th most unfriendly:

Another big business city (the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is here), Shenzhen didn’t win over our readers. Though some like the shopping and spas and the proximity to Hong Kong, others complained it was “too crowded” and “dirty,” winding up at visiting “only if I have to.”

You know who disagrees? State-owned Shenzhen Evening News, which published a rather incredible article on August 6. It wasn’t a response to Conde Nast or anything — the journos at SEN probably think Conde Nast is a Brazilian river — but it nonetheless went viral on Sina Weibo, according to Hug in China’s Bernd Chang.

The “article,” titled, “We’re 28 C, we speak for Shenzhen,” is an imagined conversation between Shenzhen and Hangzhou, Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Most of Shenzhen’s responses are “We’re 28 C,” which is about what you’d expect from someone with the intellect of a trained walrus.

But wait! It turns out Shenzhen isn’t actually mentally challenged, but just a massive troll. A screenshot of the story in Chinese is below, followed by a translation. Check out what Shenzhen tells the other cities:

Hangzhou: We are a human paradise.

Shenzhen: We’re 28 C.

Chongqing: We are the largest municipality.

Shenzhen: We’re 28 C.

Beijing: We are the political and cultural center, nicknamed the Imperial Capital.

Shenzhen: We’re 28 C.

Shanghai: We are an international metropolis, nicknamed the Demon Capital.

Shenzhen: We’re 28 C.

Guangzhou: We are the millennial commercial capital.

Shenzhen: We’re 28 C.

Other cities: Deathly boring! Can you stop talking about the temperature?

Shenzhen: We don’t have earthquakes, nor floods, nor landslides; we can sell watermelons at the gate of residential compounds, chengguan don’t beat people, don’t stomp on their heads; we often have blue skys and white clouds, and every day we don’t breathe toxic air; our coal-burning power plant project, we’ve cancelled; our police captain stands on the street on duty, never beats people; we have many high-tech companies, the employees receive hundreds of thousands in annual dividends; we’re liberated here, don’t need to solicit primary school students…

Other cities: OK, let’s talk about the temperature.

Shenzhen: Tomorrow we’re 27 C.

You’ll note that of the things Shenzhen claimed it did not have — natural disasters, mean chengguan, toxic air, etc. — it did not include public pooping and sink holes. Because holy hell do we have some public pooping and sink hole stories to share right now:

• Woman Poops In Shenzhen Subway Elevator, Caught On Video
• Another Public Pooper Caught On Camera In Shenzhen Subway
• When Sinkholes Happen: Surveillance Footage Captures The Ground Opening And Swallowing A Passerby In Shenzhen
• 3 Dead In Shenzhen Road Collapse [UPDATE: 5 Dead]
• When Sinkholes Happen: Surveillance Footage Captures The Ground Opening And Swallowing A Passerby In Shenzhen

That’s okay, Shenzhen. No one’s perfect. It’s just that the rest of us kind of know it.

Shenzhen newspaper brags about Shenzhen… (Hug in China) (Image Conde Nast)