Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin China's Yungang Buddhist Grottoes have installed timers on visitor restrooms NurPhoto via Getty Images The Yungang Buddhist Grottoes in the Shanxi Province of China is gaining attention for reasons other than its carved statues—the visitor restrooms now include timers to highlight how long people spend inside each stall. The issue of restrooms is a complicated issue for tourists (and residents), particularly when public restrooms have been disappearing for decades. The quantity and quality of restrooms do impact the overall experience of someone's trip out—there are even International Toilet Tourism Awards.
In the U.K., by 2021, the number of public restrooms had reduced by a staggering 50% and in the same year, the U.
S. had only eight toilets per 100,000 people, the same number as Botswana— Bloomberg reports that Iceland led the charge that year with 56 toilets per 100,000 residents. The situation came into focus during the pandemic when many bathrooms were taken out of service and many weren't put back into operation—it's often the case that there are never enough for the amount of people waiting.
In the case of the Yungang Buddhist Grottoes, the state-run Xiaoxiang Morning Herald reports that staff told reporters that timers had been put in above the stalls to cope with increasing visitor numbers but was primarily used as a safety measure—it allows people to see how long a stall has been occupied, to see if som.
