Chinese Showers

Although this may surprise some of you, particularly my sisters and other family members who choose to cast aspersions upon the state of my person's sanitation, but I have taken many showers in China. Indeed, I might even lay claim to some sort of expertise in this realm. And since I have been making this study of the nature of showers in China, I felt the need to enlighten the rest of the world on the off chance that someone might decide to take a trip to China. So take the following as an exact and scientific description of the shower facilities in most of China.
First of all, showers are only considered acceptable if in China’s largest cities, elsewhere they are strictly forbidden as anti-communist propaganda and criticism of the government. If you plan on venturing into the smaller and lesser known villages in China do not bring your shower cap.
Secondly these showers as a rule do not allow for shower curtains. The general mode of things is to allow the water to create a miniature lake on the bathroom floor so that the forgetful traveler will soak his socks and spend the rest of the day with miserably cold feet. If you have any sort of aversion to damp feet, forget traveling to China.
Third, when in the actual shower-taking process, it is the policy that hot water takes at least 15 minutes to make an on-scene appearance. This usually involves the highly risky process of “testing the water” (看一看水热不热) where the traveler dashes into the bathroom, barefooted of course, and shoves an arm under the stream of water. The traveler always emits a loud, primeval scream at this point either because the water as recent as half a minute ago was in its glacial form, or because it is boiling. The especially savvy travelers begin to learn how to tell the temperature of the water merely by the mistiness of the bathroom’s atmosphere. This last trick is invaluable.
Fourth, Chinese showers believe in a clear-cut form of temperature control. While Chinese showers do have knobs which offer almost 180 degrees of variance from right to left, usually the only place which results in a change of temperature is somewhere around 80 degrees if 0 is all the way left and 180 all the way right. To either side of this “sweet spot” (最好的地方) is one extreme or the other. The result is that the traveler must constantly and sometimes rapidly jiggle the knob back and forth over the sweet spot so as to moderate the temperature. This exercise results in an interesting rhythmic series of sounds from the traveler which has become known as “Chinese Opera” (京剧).
Finally, China firmly believes in the practice of having no standard direction for hot or cold. One place may require a knob turned to the right for hot water, another to the left. Since the water takes so long to heat up, the traveler often spends many anxious moments waiting. Half of him believes the heated water merely hasn’t made its way from whatever depths it resides in yet, while the other half is convinced that the knob is turned to the cold and so it won’t ever heat up. The worst course of action however for any traveler is to indulge in petty indecisiveness which involves turning the knob one way and then the other at intervals of five minutes. The only result this achieves is cold water.
But I am confident that you, armed with these priceless facts, will find no difficulty in conquering the intricate system for keeping oneself clean which has developed in China.