Twisting open bottles of water a daily ritual in China

You think you have a water problem, Vancouver? It's nothing compared to life in this country of 1.3 billion people, where being able to drink water from the tap would be front-page news.

This is the land of bottled water. Twisting off plastic bottle caps is a ritual of daily life, 24/7.

In China, you brush your teeth with bottled water, you make your tea with it. If you're smart, you even wash your salad with it unless you want a very bad dose of Chairman Mao's revenge.

Even the rooms in the pampered five-star hotel that Premier Gordon Campbell and his delegation is staying in while in Beijing during a trade mission puts a warning by the faucets that guests should heed if they hope to make their meetings on time: "Tap water is NOT drinkable."

Since the 1990s, when China's water pollution became a byproduct of the country's rush toward becoming an economic superpower, bottled water has become big business. Companies have come up with all sorts of reassuring names for it, too: Pure Clear water, Green Garden water, Crystal Dragon, to name a few.

from the Vancouver Sun