To squat or not to squat, that is the question

Editor's Note:

To squat or not to squat, that can be a question for some Westerners, or at least according to some Chinese who pretend to know, like the newly minted talk show celebrity Zhang Cailing, a researcher turned standup comedian.

The nationality of her husband probably lends some credence to her hilarious tale: He is Canadian.

In early 2020, while working on her doctoral degree in film studies in London during the COVID-19 lockdown, out of boredom, she opened a Douyin account and would chat, in her Northeastern accent, about cultural differences, her arguments with her mother-in-law, giving birth to babies overseas and making fun of her husband.

In this episode during a recent popular Chinese standup comedy competition show "Rock and Roast," which was co-produced by Tencent video and Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media Co, she gives an account of her husband's bungled attempt at squatting while using a public toilet in Tieling, Liaoning Province, Zhang's hometown.

The deadpan style again got her thousands of views online.

Credit: Chen Jie / SHINE

The whole joke could be traced to a time-honored observation that Westerners are incapable of executing a good squatting position. During the Boxer Uprising (Yihetuan Movement), an anti-imperialist armed struggle in northern China in 1900, when a mandarin, in a memorial to the emperor, noted that "The Westerners, with their rigid waist and straight legs, could be floored at one strike."

He advised Chinese fighters, ambushed in the grass, to use long bamboo poles to cause marching allied troops to stumble. "They would stay prostrate, as they could not bend their knees," he explained.

This claim proved unsubstantiated, but similar observations keep resurfacing from time to time, leading to the question: Is this aversion to squatting a cultural bias, a social adaptation or anatomical fact?

More importantly, to what degree is this an issue for visiting foreigners, particularly those who by necessity need to answer the call of nature by patronizing a squat toilet?