At long last, drinkable tap water?

On 1 June, the Beijing Waterworks Group announced that the city’s water supply is safe to drink without boiling.

From the China Daily:

The Beijing municipal water authority said water in the capital had passed all 106 tests for contaminants as required by new national standards that took effect on Sunday.

“Beijing met the standards at the end of last year,” Yu Yaping, official with the water authority told China Daily yesterday. “As industry insiders, we received the standards a long time ago. We immediately took action to improve the capital’s drinking water quality,” Yu said.

Fan Kangping, director of the water quality center of Beijing Waterworks Group, said the city’s water had been potable since 2003.

Problem is, the fact that the city’s tap water is drinkable doesn’t mean it’s drinkable from the city’s taps. Water is drinkable at the plants, but the 7000 km of pipes in the city, some quite old, introduce “secondary pollution.” Fan says, “We have a dilemma. The water piped out is clean and safe but gets contaminated before it reaches users.”

So what’s the point of the announcement, considering that the city’s drinking water has supposedly been drinkable for four years? On Xinhua’s online commentary channel, Jia Fenyong has an answer to that question:

Beijing tap water was long ago phased out of my family’s recipe book, not because we don’t want to drink it, but because we dare not. Using Beijing tap water to wash our black marble counter-tops always leaves behind white streaks when it dries; boiling Beijing tap water always gives off suspicious particles, and the water’s surface is always coated with a floating, oil-like substance.

However, reports say that on 1 June, the Beijing Waterworks Group revealed that all of Beijing’s tap water has begun to use the new 106-item national drinking water standards and had met the goals five years ahead of time. It is the first city in China to be in line with international practices; water no longer must be boiled before drinking.

In shock, I ran straight to the kitchen, carefully drew a glass of water to study it, and then heated it until boiling to ponder it some more. It was still the same water – unidentified particles still danced and stuff still floated freely on the surface.

Was this not Beijing tap water that flowed from the tap? Was this place not in Beijing?

Then I understood. Beijing tap water in the pipes, where it leaves the treatment plant, may be clean and pure, completely up to standards and in line with international practices, but after a long, winding trek where it gets “molested” by ancient pipes of all sizes, when Beijing tap water finally reaches my home, it has become dirty and unpalatable.

Thus when they declare that Beijing tap water can be drunk without boiling it first, does that mean anything to those of us waiting at the end of the twisted network of pipes? Beijing tap water is of course meant first of all for those of us living in Beijing; when the water that flows from the tap is still undrinkable even when boiled, why would they announce that Beijing has already reached the level of western metropolises and that urban residents can feel at ease drinking straight from the tap?

Perhaps we end users were never part of their vision at all. Only high-end hotels, important agencies, and major venues will get international standard Beijing tap water – who cares about us? At any rate we all know where we stand with the hopeless state of Beijing tap water. People who can, get bottled water. People who can’t, have always drunk the capital’s water from the pipes; while it’s not spring water or purified water, it’s ten thousand times better than the problem water from Taihu or Huaihe.

Perhaps they’ve mastered the modern era’s “law of the emperor’s new clothes.” So many people for so many years have silently accepted “high standard” Beijing tap water, so what’s wrong with declaring that Beijing tap water is now completely in line with international standards? Anyone who’s not going to drink it decided that long ago; if you told them that Beijing tap water was Laoshan spring water, they’d neither believe you nor drink it. Those who drink it, drink it – you tell them it’s water like in Washington or New York and they won’t even care, because that water is all they can drink, anyway.

A report contained this passage: “A waterworks expert said that tap water meeting the new standards could be drunk directly without boiling. This is good news for Beijing residents. Affected for many years by various environmental influences, Beijing’s water quality has always been viewed with suspicion by those outside the industry. Having drinkable water from the tap like in advanced cities is the product of hard work and has not been a simple task.”

The more I look at this the more I think that the words of the waterworks expert seem like joking ad copy.

Perhaps, before long, there will appear on the market a “Beijing Tap Water” brand of bottled water that will bear the note, “True International-Quality Drinking Water Taken from Beijing XXX Water Processing Plant. Worry-free Drinking.” At that time, people will probably come to know what first-rate, international quality Beijing tap water tastes like.