i think a more pressing topic is china's water quality and how ordinary people should deal with it. i always hope fang could investigate and write sth about it.

i am not worried about microbes, we chinese always drink boiled water.

i am concerned about all kinds of toxic chemicals or large unsolvable particles suspended or mixed in water.

the big cities like BJ, SH surely have better quality water, to protect HK, central and jiangxi, guangdong governments make sure factories far from east river.

unfortuately, most places don't have such standards and there are lots of reports of people affected, inflicted with mysterious diseases....

to make things worse, there's no credible agency to turn to. local governments treat factories and gdp as priorities, whenever water quality report comes out, people don't believe. and many whistle blowers have special agenda, either anti-government or like greenpeace using every chance to stop mining or manufacturing business, they tend to exaggerate or even falsify data.

in summary, no credible estimation of the water problems in china, but we are pretty certain they are there.i give an example of my own family:

my father is the first to try socalled "pin pu shui", i could't talk him out of it. he did improve a lot on appetite and then he became a strong proponent of htis product and got my brother and sister all into it. they also did seem to improve on health, my brother used to have bad mouth smell, it's now much better.

of course the "pin pu" is bull@#$%, but the pricey device does have a filtration part, i believe this and the placebo effect count for those improvements.

these deepen my suspicions of china's water supply problem. i think it's good every family has some water purification devices, no need to be the expensive "pin pu" scam ones, but just soem simple filters or charcoal ones like brita brands in america which i use now.