JD.com (京东) is taking its smart home ambitions to one of China’s least glamorous but most consequential frontiers: the public toilet. The e-commerce giant has launched the second stop of its Smart Toilet Programme, this time in Asilixi (阿西里西), a high-altitude scenic area in Bijie, Guizhou (毕节, 贵州), where elevations reach as high as 2,000 metres. Framed by mountain ridges and grassland, the site is better known for dramatic landscapes than modern infrastructure. That contrast is precisely the problem the JD.com smart toilets are trying to solve.
The project targets a persistent pain point in plateau tourism: sanitation that struggles with cold weather, water pressure and rising visitor numbers. As domestic travel pushes deeper into rural and highland regions, toilets have quietly become a bottleneck.
JD.com’s smart toilets blends design and function. The new facilities are integrated into the landscape with sculptural forms rather than boxy utility blocks. Inside, they feature smart fittings including heated toilet seats and pressurised showers, designed to remain usable in cold, low-pressure conditions and to serve campers and long-stay visitors as well as day-trippers.
The campaign narrative leans deliberately small. JD describes the programme as addressing ‘a small matter of great importance’ (一件天大的小事), and its marketing centres on the perspective of a local sanitation worker rather than a corporate executive. The message is less about tech spectacle than dignity, labour and the basics of public experience.
These JD.com smart toilets are not the brand’s first experiment in public sanitation. An earlier installation along Zhejiang’s longest natural coastline tested the same idea in a very different setting. Together, the projects point to a broader strategy: supporting local tourism infrastructure while quietly normalising smart home technology outside the urban middle-class living room. In Guizhou’s far-flung mountain ranges, that strategy works as a neat little ad for the brand as the go-to shop for home comforts.
