We entered the courtyard, with its tiny garden area and quaint decorations, and we instantly fell in love with the place.

My wife and I hadn't been searching long for a new home before we arranged to view a promising apartment in a siheyuan - a traditional hutong residence - in central Beijing. It fits all our requirements - within budget, nice size, nice location and no agent fees.

Initially, we couldn't believe our luck. It had been vacant for a few weeks after being refurbished, the friendly landlord told us. What a find, I thought. Why hadn't this place been snapped up already?

We discovered the answer shortly after entering the apartment and seeing the kitchen and bathroom.

They were the same room.

It was a small room, too, only 1.5 meters by 2.5 meters. On the left hand side were a flushing toilet, a shower head and a large sink; on the right stood a gas cooking range and a small worktop. A thin, luminous-orange curtain hung in the middle.

My wife spun around to look at me, probably alerted by the sound of my heart sinking. My face must have said it all.

The toilet and gas cooking range had appeared in separate pictures online. I'm guessing the landlord didn't have a panoramic option on his camera.

Obviously, we had not been the first to balk at this bizarre use of space. The landlord said he had seen similar reactions.

What's the big deal, some people may say. I know. Even I tried to talk myself around, telling myself I was being too precious. Apart from the fact renting the place would involve literally going entirely against one of the world's most well-worn phrases - about not, um, expelling waste where you eat - it was almost the perfect apartment.

I could see it from the owner's point of view, too. The size of these hutong homes means there is not a great deal of space to play with. In many ways, combining the rooms of the home that most require water, paper, a plunger and an extractor fan makes sense.

We chatted with the landlord for a while. "There is a public bathroom just around the corner," he said, before suggesting: "You could just use the one in the house for emergencies."

I admired his spirit, but saying that didn't help sway me one bit. Frankly, a toilet emergency is the last thing I want to experience in a kitchen or a public hutong bathroom. Once he had put both those images in my mind there was no going back.

My mother in the United Kingdom was suitably sarcastic when I told her later that day about how our apartment viewings had gone.

"Just imagine, you could wash the dishes while you shower," she suggested. "Or read a cookbook on the toilet. Kill two birds with one stone."

I'm just glad my father wasn't available to join the conversation on Skype that day, as his reaction would have been far more vulgar.

As we left the hutong courtyard, our hearts heavy due to the fact our search for a new home was still not over, we promised to keep in touch with the landlord. And we did. We heard several weeks later that he had followed our suggestion and replaced the orange curtain with a sliding-glass partition, to separate the kitchen and bathroom areas.

By then we'd already signed an agreement on another apartment. It was too late for us to reconsider our decision, but since then I'm told the place has been rented to a woman from the United States.

craigmcintosh33@gmail.com

(China Daily 02/27/2014 page20)