In a small Chinese town where unemployment has run high during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local government has embraced a surprising remedy to joblessness: public toilets. Fugong Village, in Guangdong province, usually sees nearly half of its small populace of 700 migrate to the Pearl River Delta to seek manufacturing jobs. But during the pandemic, the village has struggled as urban factories shuttered and migrant workers returned to their hometowns. So village officials decided it was time to renovate the village’s public toilet system, using funds from government’s unemployment relief program that aims to mitigate unemployment by hiring workers to build infrastructure.