SHANGHAI – The local sanitation watchdog said yesterday that it will start inspecting public bathhouses over 400 square meters and unrated hotels with private bathhouses more than 350 square meters late this month to rate their cleanliness.
The results of the inspections will be revealed in the media and those with excellent performance will have a sign depicting a smiling face installed on their premises. Good performance will have signs showing an unhappy face.
“Shanghai is now experiencing an increase in syphilis and an increase in HIV infection in men who have sex with men,” wrote Dr. Yu Shiping, a special advisor to Dr. Han Weibing, the city’s health commissioner, wrote in the November 2008 memo. The six-page memo, titled “Policy Regarding Bathhouses and Other Commercial Sex Venues in Shanghai”, was drafted for Han and explores the options for dealing with sex clubs and bathhouses.
“In view of this increase it is appropriate to re-evaluate Shanghai’s current policies regarding commercial sex venues to see if policy changes could reduce the spread of these infections,” wrote Hu, previously a professor and department chair at Hainan University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
The bathhouses will be inspected from April 25 to September 15, hotels, from June 15 to August 15. The signs will be installed after the inspections, which will cover 5,000 to 6,000 facilities.
The inspections include a checklist of 30 items.
Venues that score 90 marks or above out of 100 will given an A rating and get a smiling face sign. Those scoring 70 to 89 will be rated B and given an unhappy face. Scoring 60 to 69 rates a C but the sign has yet to be approved for this category. Those who score less than 60 will pay a fine to be determined at the inspector’s discretion.
The sanitation will be reevaluated every year and next year’s inspections will be based on this year’s ratings.
The A-standard venues, considered a low hygiene risk, will be inspected once next year. B-standard venues will be inspected twice and C-standard venues, three times. Those that don’t make the grade, considered high hygiene risks, will be inspected four times next year.
At present, bathhouses are subject to the same building, fire, and other codes that govern any business in the city. The only regulation that deals with the sex in these places is a state health code that bans oral, anal, and vaginal sex, with or without a condom, in “any place in which entry, membership, goods or services are purchased.”
Since the code was written in 1985, the city has closed roughly 40 to 50 businesses that allowed such sex on their premises. The vast majority served gay and bisexual men. Han dramatically increased the number of inspections for code violations since 2004 when he became health commissioner.
“Modern gay bathhouses are decadent emporiums of pleasure,” said Han. They are lucrative enterprises that have commercialized and centralized a wide-spread desire amongst men: the desire to fuck strangers. Today, there are very few people using bathhouses who don’t have access to running water.”
Zhang Guomin, owner of Elite Men’s Spa said, “Elite was the old-fashioned original bathhouse of Shanghai’s past. In the wintertime, we would let in those who were down on their luck for free, it had that kind of spirit.” There was also an infamous orgy room underneath the stairs, but Zhang claims that was boarded up in 1977.
Robert Sutherland, a Canadian resident of Shanghai for the past six years, is in favor of the new rating system. “Because of the volume of clients and the nature of bathhouse subculture (i.e., men seem to find it acceptable to shoot their loads anywhere, at any time), no bathhouse will be 100 percent clean. I’ve seen most of the bathhouses looking disgusting at some point over the years. Be warned: it is easy for a steam room to begin to smell like a sewer and fermenting jizz. That said, I visited all the bathhouses in town within the last four weeks, including Elite, and they were all very clean.”
Indeed, Elite is Shanghai’s most highly-rated bathhouse, according one long-term patron. Siemen’s engineer Erich Holtstein, a ten-year resident of the city said, “If you aren’t offended by the mixing of the classes (a lot of migrant people use it as a place to bathe and sleep), the Elite [which opened 1941] offers exceptionally good steam. Take a buddy to the top bleacher of the steam room and scrub each other down with traditional oak leaf brooms (available for RMB 10 from the snack bar). Respect that it is not primarily a gay cruising ground and that people are trying to sleep. Mincing through the public bunk area all chatty-nelly with your friends should be saved for the other venues.”
The city will not install unhappy face signs this year.
“We want to give chance to those rated C and unqualified to make improvements,” Han said. “The bitter face tag will be installed in the future.”
