26/08/2025
YIFAN XIANG
Preface:
I am currently a student of interior design. During my summer internship at a design firm, I observed a striking cultural distinction between domestic bathroom designs in China and those in the West. In most Chinese households, the toilet is designed for squatting, whereas Western bathrooms predominantly employ seated toilets. This divergence is particularly noteworthy when compared with other East Asian countries that were historically influenced by Chinese culture, such as Japan and Korea. For example, during the Tang dynasty, Japan frequently dispatched envoys to China to study its cultural practices, and Korea similarly engaged in cultural exchange through diplomatic missions. Given these deep historical interactions, it raises the question of why toilet culture in these regions evolved along such different trajectories.
During my internship, I collected several sets of photographs that primarily document renovation projects in residential communities constructed in the 1980s and 1990s. These images serve as valuable primary materials, capturing the spatial and design characteristics of Toilet and Bathrooms from that era. At that time, people used the toilet and showered in the same narrow space, like Figure 1&2 showing. The bathrooms documented in these photographs exemplify the typical style of Chinese toilets in late twentieth-century urban households.
I found that there are very few systematic studies on the historical development of Chinese toilets. In my future research, I hope to draw upon Chinese architectural history, design history, and broader historical developments in order to better understand and attempt to explain why Chinese toilets are so distinct from those in the rest of the world.
In my forthcoming research, I aim to explore the development of Chinese toilets from two perspectives. The first concerns the historical evolution of their forms and structures, while the second focuses on examining how different philosophical concepts across various periods in Chinese history were concretely reflected in toilet design.
Bibliography
[1] 上田 雄, 遣唐使全航海, (Japan: 草思社, 2006), ISBN: 4794215444
[2] 權悳永, 古代韓中外交史, (Korea: 秀威資訊, 2022-5), ISNB: 9786267088746
Fan’s portfolio 