It's every bit as bad as you've heard. People spit in the street, and on one memorable occasion the pregnant lady in front of me in the supermarket check-out line spat on the floor. And of course everyone smokes everywhere, though Beijing is trying to change that for the Olympics. You can no longer smoke in taxis, for example. In the hotels, and in the tourist areas of Beijing and Shanghai, you'll find bathrooms with urinals, flush toilets and running water in the sinks. Everywhere else, forget it. Public toilets are squatters. The high-class ones, which flush, have porcelain fixtures in the floor with corrugated places for your feet on each side of a drain, and a shield in front so you don't splatter. This doesn't work all that well; no one seems to have good aim. The low-class ones are just a hole in the floor. None of them ever have paper. You bring your own and don't throw it where you peed or pooped, but in a little basket, where it sits with everyone else's until it's emptied at the end of the day... or the week... Mostly, these places don't have sinks, or if they do the water doesn't work. You've never seen so much Purell in your life, so many Handi-wipes, as we used on this trip.