When I first travelled to China, I saw everybody drinking tea from thermoses and buying bottled water. I wondered why people behaved this way. My friends told me that drinking water from the faucet was not a good idea, but I could use it to shower, wash dishes and brush my teeth as long as I didn't swallow it. Now that I live in my own apartment, I need to figure out how to get clean drinking water every day.
I learned that Shanghai's residents need to find a way to get safe drinking water.
There are a lot of different reasons why drinking water from the tap is not safe. For example, the pipes that supply the water are sometimes made of old metal, so the water that runs through them gets contaminated. In Shanghai, a lot of water comes from the Huangpu River, which runs through the city. However, the river is like a water super-highway. There are thousands of ships and boats that travel on it each day! They also contaminate the water. Unless you know exactly where your water comes from, you cannot drink it directly from the faucet.
