This photo taken on Oct. 29, 2025 shows a toilet (L) and a kitchen after renovation at a household in Yangpu District of east China's Shanghai. Shanghai grappled for decades with a deeply personal challenge for many residents: the humble chamber pot. Cramped living spaces nestled within labyrinthine alleyways transformed even the most basic human needs into a challenging daily struggle. In the early 1990s, per capita living space averaged just 6.6 square meters in Shanghai. This was exacerbated by the architectural design of most the traditional Shikumen residences, which lacked private sanitary facilities. As a result, entire lanes often shared a single public toilet. To improve the overall living conditions for local residents, Shanghai embarked a redevelopment project for old neighborhoods in 1992. Through three decades of hard work, by the end of this September, Shanghai had largely completed its mission to eliminate the last of these "hand-carried toilets," a monumental task targeting the final 14,082 households identified just last year. The decades-long effort to retire the chamber pot tells a story of persistent, fine-grained urban governance in China's most populous city. (Xinhua/Chen Haoming)

SHANGHAI, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- To the world, Shanghai is a gleaming symbol of China's modern success. Yet, behind this facade of progress, the city grappled for decades with a deeply personal challenge for many residents: the humble chamber pot. Cramped living spaces nestled within labyrinthine alleyways transformed even the most basic human needs into a challenging daily struggle.

This chapter of urban life is now closing. By the end of September, Shanghai had largely completed its mission to eliminate the last of these "hand-carried toilets," a monumental task targeting the final 14,082 households identified just last year.

The decades-long effort to retire the chamber pot tells a story of persistent, fine-grained urban governance in China's most populous city.

"Everything looks the same, yet everything has changed. We almost thought we'd come to the wrong place," said residents of the rebuilt Pengpu New Village, a neighborhood in Jing'an District, who moved back in late June.

In the transformed community, every household now enjoys the convenience of a private bathroom. Additionally, the area features modern community centers that enhance culture, sports, and daily life, including a canteen, a nursing home, a swimming pool, and gyms.

Built in the 1950s, Pengpu New Village was a signature old neighborhood with thousands of households relying on chamber pots in Shanghai.

"Before dawn, we had to go out, carrying the pot and queuing at the public toilet," recalled Zhang Cuiying, who has lived there for 38 years. "Our hands went numb in winter, the smell was awful in summer, and rainy days were the worst."

The need for small toilet buckets among millions of Shanghai residents has historically arisen from inadequate urban planning and profound demographic pressures.

In the early 1990s, per capita living space averaged just 6.6 square meters in Shanghai. This was exacerbated by the architectural design of most the traditional Shikumen residences, which lacked private sanitary facilities. As a result, entire lanes often shared a single public toilet.

Starting in 2005, Jing'an District embarked on a 20-year redevelopment project for this large residential area. The project concluded in June and involved the demolition and rebuilding of aging housing. This effort not only addressed the sanitation issues but also fundamentally improved the overall living conditions for residents.

"I carry a tape measure everywhere I go, because every corner counts," said Zhou Xing'an, Party chief of the Fuxingdao neighborhood in Yangpu District. "To fit a toilet and shower into these tight spaces, we fight for every centimeter."

Zhou has become more than a community leader in the eyes of the local residents. He is now regarded as a renovation specialist, adept at reconfiguring pipes and maximizing space. "Each home requires a custom plan. Carving out that one crucial square meter is precision work -- like performing surgery in a shoebox," he noted.

One of the most telling cases involved 84-year-old Ms. Yan, who had relied on a chamber pot for nearly half a century. She and her sons lived in separate, tiny apartments nearby, each only about a dozen square meters.

After repeated visits, Zhou noticed a small street-facing storage room adjoining her kitchen. This sparked an idea: to transform it into a shared bathroom for the entire family. The proposal was met with immediate enthusiasm, and those few extra square meters finally liberated the family from a decades-old burden.

The Pengyi sub-district of Pengpu New Village was one of the most complex redevelopment projects, involving 2,110 households previously living in 282 different apartment layouts, ranging from 7.5 to 110 square meters. The challenge was to add a private kitchen and bathroom to every home without reducing the total living area or room count.

"We did massive, arduous community work. The design was revised hundreds of times," said Xu Bingrong from the Pengpu New Village renovation office. "By ultimately merging the 282 original layouts into 92 standardized types, we made the project feasible. It took patient, household-by-household explanations to reach a consensus, but we finally achieved a plan that everyone could accept."

Urban renewal is notoriously complex, and the deeply personal issue of toilets -- with its intertwined interests and individual preferences -- was among the most delicate challenges. The key to breaking the deadlock often lay in demonstration.

"Setting a good example creates a ripple effect," said Huang Yong'an, a resident of Xiangde Road in Hongkou District, who became the first in his alley to have a toilet installed.

"After the work was done, I opened my door. Neighbors came in waves, some taking photos, others recording videos. They could see for themselves that it was clean, sanitary, and didn't encroach on the living space," Huang recalled.

The most convincing testimony came from a downstairs neighbor living in a mere 9-square-meter room, who had been the most vocal opponent. After a visit, he immediately asked the street office to draw up a plan for his own home.

"Now, many of the residents who protested the most back then thank me," said the octogenarian Xu Bingrong, who has worked on Pengpu's redevelopment since 2004. "My family doesn't want me to continue, but seeing residents move back into new homes with private kitchens and baths, beautiful environments, elevators, and parking makes my life feel worth living."

Renovating these neighborhoods is a complex coordination effort across multiple government agencies, from urban planning and construction to finance and cultural preservation, noted Wang Congchun, head of the Shanghai Institute of Urban Regeneration and Sustainability under Shanghai University.

"The involved processes are lengthy and multi-layered, where poor coordination between steps can easily cause delays. Furthermore, the long project timelines demand greater stamina and superior management skills from the local officials executing them," Wang added.

"The people are the central actors in urban construction. Without their support and participation, success is impossible," explained an official at the Housing Authority in Jing'an District, who described the campaign as "a vivid demonstration of shared urban governance in action."

Shanghai's endeavor to renovate the old neighborhood reflects a broader national drive.

Data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development shows China's urban renewal efforts during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) were marked by the transformation of over 240,000 old residential communities, benefiting 110 million people across 40 million households.

These communities were enhanced with 129,000 new elevators, over 3.4 million new parking spaces, and 64,000 new facilities for elderly and child care. These targeted investments -- small in scale but vast in their reach -- have tangibly elevated the quality of life in cities across the nation.

In the recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) recently released by the Communist Party of China, the country vows to continue to make a strong push to advance urban renewal and build people-centered modern cities. ■

This file photo taken on July 18, 2019 shows two residents at their home where the toilet renovation has completed, in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

This file photo taken on May 19, 2023 shows a toilet shared by three households in an old neighborhood in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)

This file photo taken on July 18, 2019 shows a resident standing at his home where the toilet renovation is under way, in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

This photo taken on Oct. 29, 2025 shows a spittoon used by a resident before the renovation in Yangpu District, east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Chen Haoming)

This photo taken on Oct. 31, 2025 shows the construction site of a sewage pipeline renovation project in an old neighborhood in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

This photo taken on Oct. 29, 2025 shows an exterior view of a renovated public toilet in Yangpu District of east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Wang Xiang)

A resident wipes a flush toilet after the toilet renovation project in Yangpu District, east China's Shanghai, Oct. 29, 2025. (Xinhua/Wang Xiang)

This combo photo shows a shared kitchen (above, undated file photo), and a separate kitchen and toilet after renovation in an old neighborhood in east China's Shanghai on Oct. 23, 2025 (below, photo by Xinhua photographer Fang Zhe). (Xinhua)

This combo photo shows a resident at her old house in Yangpu District where the toilet accommodating only for one person, on Dec. 9, 2020 (above), and she cleaning the bathroom floor at the relocated new house in Qingpu District of east China's Shanghai, Dec. 30, 2020 (below). (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)