Hey Culligan Man!

Most people in China don't drink water from the tap. The Chinese are not being overly cautious; the water isn't safe for consumption. And China isn't unique in this. In fact, "37 percent of the populations of lesser developed countries did not have access to safe drinking water." (non-authoritative cite Wikipedia)

For the first couple of weeks that we were here, we bought our water supply from the nearest grocery store. This entailed lugging heavy gallon jugs of water home. Not. Fun. Plus, the cost started to add up. Bottled water is cheaper here than in the States, but even so, since we have to buy potable water, I want to get the best deal I can.

So, one day last week, we signed up for water delivery (quite an adventure when you don't speak the language here and the water folks don't speak English). It's much cheaper than buying it by the gallon at the supermarket, and I don't have to worry about what to do with the leftover gallon jugs (recycling doesn't seem to be on the agenda yet in China, at least in our little town). But best of all, I don't have to waste my energy on hauling water home from the grocery store. A nice man on a bicycle delivers it to my door. Instead, I can concentrate on bringing home important stuff. Like beer.

The only downside to this whole endeavor is the fact that the water dispenser that came with the apartment doesn't dispense cold water. Sure, it has a red (hot) and blue (cold) tap [see above photo], but the blue tap just dispenses room temp water. This is pretty common in these parts; our dispenser isn't broken. Rumor has it that some Chinese (maybe the majority??) think that drinking cold beverages is bad for digestion (or something), so they tend to drink room-temp or hot stuff. Which is why our "blue" tap only dispenses room temp liquid. I'm a bit suspicious of this explanation, though, since it's pretty easy to buy refrigerated beverages at grocery and convenience stores. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that cooling down water (which is sometimes purified via boiling) is just viewed as a waste of resources.

You can buy cold drinks at the grocery store, but ice is almost impossible to come by (a fact that I lamented when I tweaked a muscle in my low back four days ago and needed ice to bring down the inflammation). So instead of buying bagged ice (a luxury in which we indulged ourselves when we lived in CNY), I bought dorky ice cube trays that make ice in the shape of various fruit: pineapple, apple, melon, strawberry. Yes, this was all they had at our local store.