Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Random China Topic: Water

This is the first in a series of random topics from the China trip. Today's topic is water.

Water is something that we take for granted, walk over to the tap and take a drink of cool water. In China ... not so much! You are not to drink the water in China; not just the visitors but the nationals do not drink the water at all.

The tap water has a strong sulfur smell and is naturally very soft water; however, no one drinks the water! We were even told to use bottled water for brushing your teeth.

Speaking of bottled water ... when we went to a restaurant to eat, we would order water and 90% of the bottled water was room temperature. Because of the poor water quality there is no ice and from what I could see very little refrigeration for water alone.

One more "water" observation ... I don't have a clever way to tell this so I'll just put it out there. In China it is totally acceptable to water your grass/lawn with raw sewage water. I'm totally NOT joking here! They literally drop a sump-pump into an open manhole and and start pumping out the "water"! I'm not kidding it reeks! As I'm watching this process happen I'm thinking that just a few hours before the "watering" began I was playing with the kids in that grass! GROSS!

Just thinking about it ... now I feel like I need a shower! More topics to come, none quite this gross; well there is the WalMart post that is coming!

I remain,
Pastor Steve

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog has a new look....
Big Bro

The Curries said...

Hmm, water and fertilizer at the same time.

I like my water room temperature- if it's too cold, I don't drink enough to actually hydrate myself. I'm weird that way, at least by American standards!

I'll be out your way in a little over a week! Hope to see you.

~Sheridan