"Some local government officials here visited a sewage plant and saw that the treatment technology had come from Japan. They wanted a home-grown solution so they asked us to work on it," he added.

"We extracted bacteria from all type of excrement, human, pig, chicken and duck, and we tested our compounds one by one," he said.

"The smells coming out of public lavatories, or cesspits, or rubbish tips, are made up of more than 160 different compounds," he explained, adding that their bacteria, including a strain from the lactobacillus, saccharomycetes and actinomycetes families, can convert and absorb many of them.

He boasted that the Chinese formula, which costs around ￡5 per litre, has no side effects and can be used to fend off the stench of any type of biological decomposition.

More recently, Beijing has waged a war to improve conditions in public lavatories, first introducing a star-rating and then, two years ago, drafting a rule that no more than two flies should be present in any of the city's facilities at the same time.

对外国人来说，中国的公共厕所简直是一场噩梦。

上世纪九十年代，北京旅游管理处收到的三分之一的投诉都跟公共厕所的设计、气味有关。在一些小城市或者农村地区，旱厕沟渠里暴露的粪便、以及令人窒息的气味就足以让最勇敢的游客哭着回旅馆。

2000多年以来，中国一直在和臭厕所作斗争。在魏朝（公元220-265年），皇室厕所的参观者们也纷纷用纸盒掩鼻以抵挡臭味。

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