Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The worst toilet I ever saw was in rural China. We were in the town of Litang, in the far west of Sichuan Province, where there was a Tibetan grassland festival. My friend, a young Beijing girl, had decided we could stay in a Tibetan truck driver's rest stop for the princely sum of 10 yuan ($1.5) a night. The toilet was indescribably filthy. She hadn't noticed. I refused to stay, which was only compounded when the owner saw foreigners and doubled the price.

Anyone who has traveled in China's rural areas will have similar stories of appalling facilities - ones built above the pig sty, being forced to do your business in places with no walls or doors, with many prying eyes. Even in downtown Beijing, where facilities have been modernized, you can't guarantee they'll be clean.

So the recent announcement by President Xi Jinping, hard on the heels of World Toilet Day, marked every year on November 19, that China's "toilet revolution" is going to extend to all rural parts of the country, hasn't come a moment too soon.

It's already been taking place in tourism hot spots, and an upgrade in facilities in these areas is expected to boost tourist numbers and improve local economies and incomes. As a former tour guide in China, one of the most-asked questions was about the toilets - many Westerners not being used to Asian-style squat toilets (even though some say this posture is better for health), but also the quality of the facilities.

But will a mere upgrade in bricks-and-mortar facilities be enough? After all, many in China have put up with relatively primitive sanitation facilities for years, and while they improve their housing, toilet facilities sometimes remain an afterthought.

Still today, 57 million Chinese households are without private facilities, among which, 17 million face serious hygiene issues, according to figures quoted in the South China Morning Post. In rural areas, coverage of sanitary toilets is expected to rise to 85 percent by 2020, and 100 percent by 2030.