After spending several weeks in China, foreign visitors may start to notice Chinese people’s strange “hot water rituals.” When eating in a Chinese restaurant, the waiters may provide people with hot water or hot tea instead of icy soda. After spending a whole day working, Chinese people would like to do a foot bath with hot water to relax. Even when Chinese people wake up, they would like to drink a bottle of hot water first. Imagine a scene where an old man sits in front of the television, drinking a cup of hot wolfberry tea with his feet in a tub of hot water, waiting for his hot chicken soup to be ready. These examples show how significant hot water is to Chinese people in their daily life. So, why do Chinese people love hot water? 

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Many people have been studying this “hot water ritual” and they have managed to find some explanations. In terms of drinking, it seems easy to explain the fixation on hot water among the Chinese. As American writer Angela Fang writes, “When you ask a Chinese person with a hot thermos why he or she drinks hot water, the answer is usually ‘it’s better for your health’”. [1. Angela Fang. “Why do Chinese people always drink hot water?” TutorMing China Expats& Culture Blog, February 26, 2016, https://blog.tutorming.com/expats/why-do-chinese-people-always-drink-hot-water.] This makes sense because there are bacteria in water that has not been boiled. Boiling water can get rid of these harmful microorganisms so that people will not get sick after drinking the hot boiled water.

However, this still cannot explain why Chinese people prefer drinking hot water or soup rather than clean iced water when having meals in restaurants. Fang points out that hot water may increase blood circulation, which is good for people’s health. Keeping healthy can also be a reasonable answer to the question of why Chinese people love taking a foot bath in hot water. It relaxes the muscles and increases blood circulation so that people will feel refreshed after taking a foot bath. Furthermore, as Eun-Jung Sung and Yutaka Tochihara report, [2. Eun-Jung Sung, and Yutaka Tochihara. “Effects of bathing and hotfootbath on sleep in winter.” Journal of physiological anthropology andapplied human science 19, no. 1 (2000): 21-27.] taking a hot water bath or a hot water foot bath can “facilitate earlier sleep onset,” indicating that there is an actual benefit of taking a foot bath. This demonstrates that using hot water is, scientifically speaking, good for people’s health. 

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bathroom-in-modern-resort-house-5677270/

The explanations above might be part of the reasons why Chinese people are obsessed with hot water. However, considering that even elderly people without access to scientific knowledge believe in the necessity of using hot water, awareness of scientific knowledge is somewhat incomplete as an answer. There must be some other reasons that can reasonably explain this phenomenon.

One reason may be traditional medical beliefs. Back in the old days, Chinese people believed in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which categorizes everything related to diseases and symptoms based on the theory of Yin and Yang. [3. Jin-Ling Tang, et al. “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” The Lancet 372,no. 9654 (2008): 1938-1940.] Since the climate in China is generally humid which can be categorized as Yin, hot water, which is related to Yang, can be used to “expel excess humidity and cold from the body” to keep the balance between Yin and Yang so that people will not become ill. [4. Zhang Guowei. “The History Behind China’s Obsession With Hot Water.” SixthTone, September 28, 2017, https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1000919/the-history-behind-chinas-obsession-with-hot-water.] Even in the blazing summer, Chinese people would like to drink hot water or take a hot foot bath to get rid of th eso-called shiqi (湿气) which simply means humidity or wet air inside their body. Believing in traditional medicine, Chinese people are taught that hot water is good for their health, regardless of the scientific mechanism.

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Another reasonable explanation comes from Chinese history. According to Zhang Guowei’s article entitled “The History Behind China’s Obsession With Hot Water,” [5. “GanxieGuojia, Rang Wo He Shang Liangbaikai” (Thanks for the Country that I can Drink Boiled Water). Dou Ban (blog), April 17, 2018, https://www.douban.com/note/665981918.] there was a cholera outbreak in 1862 in Shanghai, which spread north by mail boats so the southern part of China was not affected by this big epidemic. People living in the south somehow thought that it was their behavior of drinking hot water that saved their lives. Although the truth was that cholera had never been recorded in the south of China, hot water was considered as a necessity of survival. This may contribute to the common belief among Chinese people that hot water is a good thing therefore using hot water is healthy behavior.

Furthermore, the government’s policy is also a possible factor that causes people’s fixation on hot water. What is different from many Western countries is that the Chinese government paid more attention to calling on people to drink hot water instead of improving the quality of tap water. Around the 1930s, the government of the Republic of China started the New Life Movement in which drinking hot boiled water was an important part. [6. BoWen. “Nanchangshi Xinshenghuo Yundong Yanjiu (1934-1935)” (Research on the NewLife Movement in Nanchang Province (1934-1935)). (PhD diss., FudanUniversity, 2003), 76.] What’s more, the government of the People’s Republic of China also called on people to drink hot water in order to keep healthy. Since people at that time could not afford the equipment to boil water, many boiler rooms were set up to help provide hot water to people. [7. “GanxieGuojia.”] Drinking hot water became fashionable, helping form the common belief held by many Chinese that hot water is good for you. Thus, the government’s policy should be considered part of the reason for Chinese people’s obsession with hot water.

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Even if Chinese people were not asked by the government to use hot boiled water, many people would still worry about the water quality, and therefore they choose to boil water before using it because they believe boiled water is safer to use. According to a report by Liu Huichun, fifty-four percent of consumers in China believe that water pollution in China is really severe. [8. Liu Huichun. “Jingshuiqi Shichang Qianli Juda, Pujilv Weisha Name Di” (The potential of water purifier market is big, why is the popularization so poor)?”. Zhongguo Zhiliang Wanli Xing 10, (2016): 31-33.] Their worries seem to be reasonable because only 75.3% of sources of tap water meet standards in China, [9. Jin Xiao. “Dui Woguo Chengzhen Zilaishui Shuizhi ji Shendu Chuli WentiDe Pingshu” (The analysis of the tap water quality and the advanced treatment technique in China). Proceedings of 2019 CSES Annual Conference onEnvironmental Science and Technology 2.] which is much lower than the percentage of clean water in Western developed countries. In the United States, for example, less than five percent of sources of tap water fail to reach the clean water standard. [10. Ibid.]

People may be curious why Chinese people do not use filters or water purifiers to get safer water, so that they don’t have to worry whether the tap water is polluted or not. The problem is that not many people notice that filters and water purifiers can help them avoid unsafe tap water. Until 2019, only around thirty percent of citizens in China used water purifiers to filter the tap water. [11. Ibid.] Even if all Chinese people used water purifiers, the problem could be completely solved because a lot of water purifier brands have been proven to be disqualified by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China. [12. Liu Huichun. “Jingshuiqi Shichang.”] Compared to using water purifiers, Chinese people believe that boiling water is still a better way to get safe water, which further contributes to their fixation on hot water.

To conclude, some might explain Chinese people’s fixation on hot water as the result of knowing its health benefits based on scientific knowledge, while others believe there may be other reasons. From my point of view, it is Chinese people’s traditional medical beliefs, history, the government’s policy and their worries about water safety issues that contribute to their obsession with hot water. Therefore, next time when you enter a Chinese restaurant to have a meal, why not drink a cup of hot water and think about the culture that lies behind this ritual?

Wang Ziqin (王子秦)is a student in the DKU Class of 2023, majoring in Molecular Bioscience. He is curious about the cultural and scientific reasons behind Chinese rituals, one of which is the obsession with hot water. This essay was written in Austin Woerner’s EAP102A class.