and not a drop to drink. No, it’s not rain. It’s on the dishes, on the floor, and especially in the bathroom. Those white, plastic, crenulated, hose-like tubes which run from the sink drain to the permanent-in-the-floor drain aren’t actually attached. They are just stuck there, looking like they are attached, so that if you actually run water full force down the drain, you may be in trouble. There is going to be a blow-off and just one more reason that the bathroom floor will be flooded. There is a reason why most Chinese households have lots and lots of colorful hard plastic basins for the washing-up process. Not only do the underwear need to be washed-out by hand, but also the sox. There is something especially nasty about dirty sox. Just ask your nose. Since it takes a while for the hot water to arrive you need to catch the cold water in a container and use it on the plants or washing the night soil off of veggies. Speaking of veggies: Do you really need to soak them in diluted bleach water for fifteen minutes before washing them for the third time? Are salad and the whole array of raw veggies worth the trouble? Apparently the Chinese don’t think so for they rarely eat raw vegetables, preferring to cook tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and all greens such as lettuce. You might be surprised at how delicious romaine, leaf lettuce and young pea greens are dashed briefly through boiling goat or mushroom broth.
Let’s return for the moment to the wet bathroom floor. Some bathrooms consist mainly of a large shower which doubles as a toilet. The squat toilet is designed with right and left foot pads but usually lacks a splash guard which means that someone is always in there cleaning and lots of water everywhere. Beware: there is always a steep step down when exiting a public toilet stall and there is water everywhere. You don’t want to go skating in this cramped space. In homes, there are often plastic slip-ons left at the bathroom door so that you can change out of your other house slip-ons in the designated wet-zone. My problem is that often, my feet are larger than the proffered slip-ons. I must request the men’s size. When navigating (in the literal sense) the bathroom space, note that everything will be covered with water since it doubles as a shower. There are specially designed toilet paper holders which do a pretty good job of keeping it dry through the shower. There are small used-toilet paper bins which double as trash cans and also are covered. If a western-style toilet happens to be in the shower, you just have to deal. Be happy for small things. The challenge remains: where to put the few items which absolutely must be kept dry?? Now that is a foreign concept: “dry”!! Being an exceptionally tall person by Asian standards (5’6”), I can reach the high rack where a small towel or a pair of underwear could repose. I suggest extreme caution however because this rack may not be well-connected. In fact it might just be decoration. When said shower is completed, just try to get fully dressed without getting something wet which you didn’t want to get wet. Houdini could have done it; not I. When no one was watching, and I am not talking about the private part of the bathroom, but rather the public part, I tried just once to run the water to hot, without using the catch basin and regretted it deeply. It was not just the shame of having wasted water, but it was the draining mechanism which wasn’t fully attached. There was water everywhere and I just walked away. No more sneaking around for me. Better to not bathe at all or to use the towel, which is always damp, like a wash rag and do the sponge bath. Here is a tip. Always carry a small bath towel with you when traveling in China. And forget the toothbrush! Brand new, sanitized tooth brushes are always on offer, but towels are not. Once I was offered a lovely sealed-in-cellophane, new towel for my own personal use in a home. But before I could catch my breath, it was immersed in a basin of cold water to be sure that it was even cleaner and it never did dry, certainly not during the three days I was there, but perhaps by the time spring rolled around. With no heat indoors in winter south of the Yangtze, forget about “dry” anything.
Let’s move into the kitchen. Restaurants have a large dish appliance which houses washed dishes. It is not clear to me if they heat up and sanitize or if they serve more as dish drainers. But dishes are never dried. It is also not clear if hot water is used for washing. Dish detergent is readily available in the stores so it must be consumed on a regular basis. As I wonder about eating from a dish which is still dripping water which most likely was never purified, folks say, just be sure it is dry. So I find myself always drying dishes, especially if the place where they were left to drain is cold or not well-ventilated. I don’t know about yours but my kitchen has no hot water so I put the kettle on (the electric tea-kettle) when I want to do dishes. I consider my dishes clean once they are washed, dried and put in the cupboard. But I caught students who had come into my environment to cook, rinsing my “clean” dishes and chop sticks before using them. So my guess is that they don’t believe that dishes which have been put away are clean. I have been told to keep a separate cutting board for raw meat and one for cooked meat and other things such as vegetables. This may be one of the reasons I simply don’t buy raw meat to cook, relying instead on smoked, dried or pre-cooked meat.
What makes water clean, anyway? Just outside my kitchen window are two somewhat untamed ponds.

crime scene

The smaller one on the left is surrounded by odd assorted discarded public industrial waste. Just this morning, I saw one woman washing clothes in it and another nearby rinsing her mop in it.
By the way those mops are everywhere. Every morning they are wet-mopping the polished marble walkways and steps which lead to my classrooms. I do step daintily. They say that by the second year here you have discovered the way to step and you don’t slip, slide and fall anymore. We will see.
So why is there “not a drop to drink”? Perhaps this is why Chinese people drink so little. I am the proud borrower of a water distiller. I fill it with tap water, cover it with the distilling device and plug it in. In roughly four hours I have a limited quantity of very safe water, probably safer than any bottled water. Even the heavy metals have been removed. Boiling is one method of killing bacteria and viruses but surely not as thorough as distilling.

the way to very pure water

One must change the charcoal in the filter on a regular basis and clean the fill tank with white vinegar or other cleanser as prescribed to remove the scaly mineral residue. The question remains: Should one use only distilled water when cooking or is boiling the water enough? Can a westerner’s system build up the immunity necessary to deal with the environmental conditions in China? I was told that after six months I would be adjusted to the physical conditions. Perhaps it is true. No major sickness has encroached on my life.
If I told you the extraordinary measures I take to dry things or to keep things dry would you think lesser of me? The guilt is weighing me down so I am in a position where I have to spill at least some of the beans. I sometimes leave the heat lamp in the toilet on so as to dry things after a shower. I drape my long johns over the wall-mounted TV so that they are in the direct current of hot air coming from the air-conditioner. Will I go to hell?

Winter Silk over TV anytime!