Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink!

I’ve travelled to many places and been told “Don’t drink the tap water!” only to see the locals bemused at my buying bottles of the stuff. But here in Beijing, even the locals won’t drink it. It only seems sensible to follow suit so apart from brushing my teeth in, it never passes my lips. Instead, we painstakingly haul all our drinking water up 6 flights of stairs.

It always strikes me as bizarre, in a city which is developed in so many ways, to see people queuing to refill their water containers from the water dispensing machines on the street. I haven’t figured out why people trust these slot machines to provide safe drinking water, but not their taps.

It is quite possibly due to the massive mistrust of the government here. No-one believes anything they say, despite the museum erected in the name of quality tap water (poetically named ‘The Beijing Museum of Tap Water’ which I have yet to visit). In the same way that everyone turns to the American embassy’s air pollution data, the government’s repeated testing of water samples does little to persuade anyone. "All tap water in Beijing meets quality standards," said Cheng Jing, head of the Beijing Water Authority. And what exactly are those quality standards Mr Cheng?

It comes out of the taps clear, doesn’t smell and I have tried drinking it and felt no ill-effects. I get the impression that the problem is not a biological one, more likely a chemical one. Perhaps its long term rather than short term damage that is the worry? Finding any data about Beijing tap water seems impossible. I wonder why that is?

All I know is that a small pool left to dry leaves brown stains on my white kitchen worktop. Hmm.