A Brief Anecdote on Sanitation

Unfortunately this week is finals week and I have been more or less brain dead for the majority of it. But all of that will be over tomorrow or the day after, and I shall once more be free. But until then, I thought perhaps I could relate to you a few short stories about the sanitary situation here in Kunming. There are those of you who would like to believe that China is a filthy, disgusting, dirty place which could learn lessons in cleanliness from Africa. I am here to disprove these false and disturbing beliefs.
First of all, water in China is very clean. Sure it is inadvisable for one to consume tap water, but really is America any different. How many of you regularly drink your own tap water? I know that many of you are too picky to even drink American tap water so how can you criticize the Chinese for not drinking their own tap water?
So when here you drink bottled water. Perhaps you think American bottled water is cleaner than Chinese. Well, at least the Chinese fill their bottles all the way up to the rim. In America have you ever noticed how you never actually get a full water bottle? In China this is not the case. I wondered why this might be, but upon opening my first bottle of Chinese water figured it out by getting soaked. If you fill a water bottle all the way to the top and seal it, the customer struggling to open the bottle will inevitably end up with much of the water on his or her shirt or pants. But aside from this Chinese bottled water and American are very similar...as long as you don't let your Chinese water sit around for more than a day.
I made this mistake.
I purchased a water bottle in the morning (a large one--liter and a half) and drank from it all day. At night I still hadn't finished it, but didn't think much of this and let it go, planning to finish it off in the morning. I woke up, and being in my normal foggy state, wandered about for a bit trying to bring myself into full wakefulness. I finally did and figured it would be good to take a good ole swig of fresh spring water from the Springs of Yulong Mountain (the bottling company promised crisp, fresh, mineral water direct from the mountains). I picked up my bottle but stopped short of drinking from it. For some reason the water was yellow. Upon closer inspection I found out that I was wrong. The water was green. Apparently there was something growing in it too. Have you ever looked into a ditch on the side of the road with its festering green scum? This was exactly what my water bottle looked like. I thought briefly that this was the same water I had consumed copious quantities of the day before, but decided to ignore that fact. Lesson: Do not let your Chinese water sit "mature" it is not like wine.
Perhaps one more story will fill out the picture for those of you who still doubt how clean China is. I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning, looking at the traffic wandering by on the street outside. I should have been paying attention to the traffic inside. In less than five minutes a string of no less than a dozen rats dashed under my feet and across the floor apparently deciding to exit out the back door. I don't know if this was the sign of some coup in the rat world and these were the last few crime bosses making a hasty getaway out the back, but it was definitely proof that the coffee shop didn't have any more rats. Now that they were all gone, I felt much better about the crackers they gave me with my coffee (previously I had always wondered why the crackers looked like someone had nibbled on them).
Hopefully this enlightens all you ignorant curs, don't be casting no more aspersions on the Chinese. They just as clean as us Americans...well, almost as clean.