The toilet was not what I had expected. Still less the porn.

The pedestal in the bathroom of our executive suite at the Roumei Beauty Hotel looked like something built for astronauts, or a movie prop, or a tangent that design had taken in the near future. It had a console with covered buttons and symbols that suggested heat and jets of water and perhaps vibration. It appeared to have a function that might keep it steady in an earthquake. Useful, up to a point – but the writing was all in Chinese.