If you've ever traveled to Europe, you'll see this, this and this on the street, waiting a little while for a passerby to use it in public. Although Europeans are relaxed when it comes to public urination, if I were you, I'd be embarrassed to turn red in the face on such occasions.
Why do Europeans, who pride themselves on being "civilized," like to urinate in public?
In fact, Europeans have been urinating in the street for more than two hundred years, and if you've watched any of the foreign historical documentaries, you'll realize that walking on the streets of most European countries was once a very appetizing thing to do. American author Hodding Carter wrote in the book "The History of the Toilet": "In France, the people pouring the potty sympathized with the pedestrians outside, and whenever they dumped it, they would shout 'Watch out, water!"
Over time, the streets have become cesspools, civilized continental Europe, a few hundred years ago was this barbaric", in many Western classical novels, we can often see people pouring urine and feces on the street, pedestrians, even if they are splashed all over the body, but also had to admit their own bad luck.
Because they themselves have had such behavior, although many people suffer from it, but after a thousand years, people did not feel that this action has the slightest problem, but it is the development of a gentleman walking in the left side of the lady's habits, because this can always block the air to the "dirty rain".
The world-famous classic Louvre was once the dirtiest place, anthropologist Robert H. Lowie (Robert H. Lowie), wrote in Civilization and Barbarism, in the courtyard, on the staircase, on the balcony, behind the door, everyone is at liberty.
Francis I, as King of France, was not happy to see the Louvre become a "public ****ing toilet".
In 1539, when he issued a decree, "we are unhappy and worried about the terrible spoilage of the environment of the beautiful Paris", declared feces illegal, but this law has not played a role in the effect of the painter Leonardo da Vinci has developed a detailed plan for a hygienic city, feces, his program is to build He had a plan to build a sufficient number of public ****ing toilets.
Finally, in the spring of 1830, the city of Paris, France, decided to install the first public **** urinal on the main road, this open-air urinal and the surrounding buildings are separated from each other independently, set up, dismantle is very convenient, but also can provide a lightweight public **** space.
So in the following decades, open-air toilets developed rapidly in France, and in their heyday, there were more than 1,500 urinals on the streets of Paris, all of different shapes, sizes, and configurations. If you look at it dialectically, the development of toilets can be roughly equated to the development of human civilization, and the first time toilets for men and women **** entered the public consciousness was in the 1990s.
In the American drama "Sweet and Sassy", the heterosexual colleagues in the law firm, in the men's and women's **** with the restroom without a word, this scene can be found thousands of years ago prototype, that is, the ancient Rome, the ancient Greeks due to the nature of comfort and love of beauty, invented the decoration of the night pots, in the party and travel love to bring it.
The Romans were different, they focused on practicality and invented the sewer, but not everyone could enjoy this sanitation, the use of the license is expensive, only for a few affluent people have, the average Roman family can only rely on the public toilets, so the public toilets and bathrooms, as important as the social occasions in Rome.
In the eyes of many ancient Romans, in addition to the meaning of the use of the toilet itself, but also a fairly important gossip and gossip and talk about business social places, they are in the lavatory of the lavatory, discuss politics, gossip, but the sanitation equipment is far less sophisticated than the appearance of the public toilets.
Ancient Rome prided itself on a perfect system of water circulation, so that there was always running water in the ditches and very little odor, so one of the favorite places of ancient Romans was the latrine.
There may be many viewers do not believe that there were once some places to hold "high respect" for excrement, in the 10th century, the Welsh tribal leader Hywel, specifically set up a "Minister of Urine" position, as the name suggests, the Minister of Urine is the position of the management of urine. As the name suggests, the Minister of Urine is the position of managing urination. Hewel believed that urine is a very precious and useful thing, not to be wasted, and each community in Wales also appointed a "manure mayor".
Ancient people did not regard toileting as something to be ashamed of, but modern attitudes have changed so much that they regard excrement as filth, and euphemisms for the word "toilet" have proliferated, including, but not limited to, swamp, dump, gentleman's house, place of necessity, place of relaxation, smallest room, and restroom, with only the last one remaining in use. Only the last one has survived to this day, and is the only one that seems more understandable now.
Even if they weren't gender-segregated, inner-city public ****rooms were always much better than open-air toilets, and the semi-open space of street toilets still creates a sense of tension, but even though the disadvantages are so obvious, they haven't yet been eliminated by the indoor public ****rooms, which is to say a few words about the various inconveniences of public toilets in Europe.
Europeans love cleanliness, so the environment in public toilets is very good, but a significant portion of the toilets need to be charged, either by staff at the door or by self-service coins, which is not as cost-effective as using an outdoor toilet for many people.
If you are in China, if you have a sudden emergency when you are shopping, you will not be refused to use the toilet in any store, but in Europe, if you want to use the toilet in a store, you have to be a customer first, for example, McDonald's has printed the password of the store's toilet door in the small ticket, and since the European people like the open-air toilets so much, the designers naturally want to innovate.
In recent years, the design of the open-air toilets has become more and more popular.
In recent years, many new open-air toilets have opened the eyes of the people, privacy and convenience have been improved, such as the French open-air urinals, the spiral design instead of locks, both to protect the privacy of the door and facilitate the rapid, designed for women.
Lifting toilets in the Netherlands
Disguised as sewage manhole covers on weekdays, it is when they need to be used that the well-sealed cubicles slowly rise from the ground. However, many users of open-air toilets, or have to face such a hiccup, you look at the scenery while toileting, the people on the street looking at the scenery in the look at you, the emergence of toilets not to say that saved human civilization, at least also let the Europeans and Americans to live a little more decent.
In the United States, the cholera epidemic of the Civil War made people realize that it wasn't quite right to throw the contents of a urinal carelessly out the window, and they began to develop a deep sense of responsibility for public ****ing hygiene.
In the 16th century, the English poet John Harrington invented the flush toilet, which gradually replaced the potty;
In the 19th century, the plumber Thomas Clapper improved the traditional toilet;
After the end of the 19th century, public **** toilets became commonplace in the United States.
From then on, human waste discharge into the modernization period, Hodding Carter has exclaimed: "The most obscure heroes of human history are the wise man who invented the sewer and the humble plumber", the French artist Duchamp once brought a urinal on the art exhibition, and named it "The Spring", which has become the art history of the An anecdote.
The flush toilet is prevalent in Europe and the United States, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom will be a beautifully shaped toilet as a status symbol, in the United States, the toilet is representative of an emerging lifestyle. In Far East Japan, the first flush toilet appeared in the old Iwasaki residence near Ueno Fudo Pond in Tokyo, the residence of the eldest son of Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of the Mitsubishi Foundation.
Speaking of toilets, it is necessary to mention the "Asian squat" and "European sit"!
The toilet brings out the style of toileting, people sit in this elegant posture, you can sweep away the dirt, no effort, but also blocked the exposed body parts, even in the movie and TV drama scenes, will not feel dirty and embarrassing.
The squatting pit may not be able to do, but even if it is considered "indecent" way of toileting, Asians prefer "squatting toilet", feet completely on the ground, hips close to the ankles, the body to maintain a smooth, in the eyes of Westerners can only be on the ground on the toes. In the eyes of westerners, this kind of posture is called "Asian squatting".
Europeans on the squatting toilet is also confused, in a well-known foreign video site, there have been netizens "naively" that the squatting pit is used to wash their feet, "Asian squatting" and "European sitting
According to statistics, each person spends about 15 minutes a day on the toilet, in other words, more than a year of his or her life is spent on the toilet.
Over the past 200 years, modern sanitation has increased average life expectancy by 20 years, making toilets the most important factor in increasing human life expectancy, with every $6 invested in sanitation yielding an average return of $42 in healthcare savings and productivity gains.
Humans have never stopped trying and exploring ways to solve the problem of internal emergencies, at least for the time being.