Chinese people LOVE me! (20)

"Chinese people love me because...... I can take a pee in only 30 seconds or so!"

Oh yes, straight in, straight out, no messing around. My fellow urinal-users find it quite baffling, and deeply enviable.

The problem, you see, is that the Chinese have not invented the fly flap - at least, not for underwear. Boxer shorts seem to be the most common variety of smalls over here, but they are invariably fly-less (as I discovered to my cost on the one and only occasion when I bought some here, a few years ago). No doubt the Chinese originally invented flies - centuries before the rest of the world - but then abandoned the idea again, as having no utility.

It is quite a spectacle to behold a whole roomful of Chinese men, all desperate to relieve their bladders, all having to go through the ungainly rigmarole of grappling with waistband and belt, dropping trousers to half-mast, widening stance to try to prevent trousers from dropping all the way to the floor, and then hopping around madly to try to get their member to flip out over the top of their undies (yes, they always do this - they seem to find it unseemly, or perhaps just too time-consuming, to drop their kecks all the way to their knees as well!). And then, of course, they have to repeat the whole process in reverse when they've finished. It easily doubles the amount of time they have to take over the operation. Me, I just unzip and GO.

You become used to the prospect of a row of half-exposed Chinese buttocks greeting you whenever you walk into a busy public toilet; but, somehow, the jiggling and bouncing around that happens while your colleagues are thus hobbled by their down-around-their-knees trousers still always surprises and alarms.

I think there is a utility in this humble idea that perhaps the "wise forebears" were missing out on.