What you are about to read may or may not surprise you but I decided to write about this because the question of whether or not tap water is safe in China or any other country may well be tainted with lies from the corporate water bottling companies. Fall 2003 I came to China for the first time without any of the recommended vaccines Hep A, B etc etc. From day one people warned don’t drink the water in other words buy it. At the time I never thought much about it and went with the “flow”. One month later fired from my job and got shifted to Qingdao from Dongying, Shangdong. I thought about it for awhile and decided that I would go get the vaccinations – at least the basic ones considering the fact that at the time the vaccines were cheap.
From Shangdong to Guangxi to Taiwan everywhere I have been people warned you not to drink the tap water, in other words buy it. Walk into an average supermarket and find several brands of spring water including boiled tap water! Imagine boiled tap water and sold for profit! “Oh the tap water is ok for brushing your teeth but not for drinking”, “not that it is going to kill you just don’t drink it”. In Qingdao, after getting an apartment to live I was asked if I needed one of those big bottles of water delivered, I said “no, the water is fine boiled”, the reply I got was nothing but a blank stare – as if I should buy it.
Seven years later and repeated trips to China it has finally come to my senses – I have been cycling in the mountains around Yulin, Guangxi and filling my water bottle in little streams and springs all over the place and drinking it – excellent tasting water I have to say, brushing my teeth and washing my fruit and vegetables with tap water and eating the fruit and vegetables dripping with tap water. I once had a Korean room mate in Japan who was shocked when I drank the tap water in Japan – he said “that’s ocean water, you can’t drink that”. The water in many places in Canada is far more polluted with ecoli from mink, chicken, pig farms and will make you sick. If everyone drank tap water then the bottled water companies would seriously all file for bankruptcy.
There is nothing wrong with the water and many people DO drink the tap water but the majority of them are just consumers with a lot of wealth to yes, just it spend like WATER. Seven years here and I have finally realized there is really nothing wrong with the tap water it is just that people have been too damn well brainwashed by water bottling companies who use rich actors, and comedians pictured on water bottles to scare you and make you want to be “just like the one pictured on the bottle”. So now go to your sink and have a cup of tap water and say k!$cf the bottling companies!
![Meaning of [The friend is pulled to the unlucky affair]. The good luck and daytime are large good lucks in the misfortune and the evening in the morning. However, the funeral is abhorred.](http://www.irohaproject.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/koyomi/image/roku1.gif "Meaning of [The friend is pulled to the unlucky affair]. The good luck and daytime are large good lucks in the misfortune and the evening in the morning. However, the funeral is abhorred.")
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