Water Purification vs Watermelon in China

Eating watermelon while in China might cause you diarrhea

Your relatives sit you down on their stools in the doorway of their rural Chinese farmhouse. The doorway is the only large shaded area, and there is the bonus cross draft that, in your mind, seems to lower the 30°C temperature. Watermelon slices comes out and you are thankful for their hospitality, but you know that despite your vigilance against waterborne bacteria, you will get the runs. Do not eat watermelon while traveling in China.

Getting sick while traveling makes your trip miserable. While you should be having a good time you hang on and hope the event will quickly pass. Water in China is not potable, meaning it is not drinkable from the tap. Precautions are required so you do not get sick.

This water filter from MEC.ca is compact, easy to use and effective

Traveling with two small children, our water regimen is quite strict. Well water is first boiled for 5 minutes or longer, then poured into a secondary metal container with a lid to cool and settle. Settling is required so that sediment in the water settles to the bottom, rather than stay suspended in the water and play havoc on your bowels. This cooled and settled water is then run through a 0.2 micron water filter we bought at MEC.ca, which removes 95% of all bacteria and viruses. Viruses smaller than 0.2 microns will still slip through, though they were hopefully killed by boiling. Boiled, settled, then filtered, the resulting water is stored in designated water bottles and is safe to drink. I have tested this method and it works very well.

Filtering water is troublesome and time consuming, but there was no other way to get clean water. Water filters are small and portable. Expensive, yes, but I do not travel to rural China without one.

Unfortunately for us when elders foist juicy watermelon upon us during a hot spell in rural China, one really cannot refuse. Invariably I know that we will get diarrhea that night. This has occurred many times. Pears, apples, oranges and other fruit are Ok to eat if peeled, but not watermelon, which I believe is 98% water. A recent article on exploding watermelons due to misuse of fertilizer brought my Chinese watermelon views to the fore. These chemical fertilizers cannot be good for people. Damaged watermelons will be fed to the pigs, which are slaughtered for meat consumption. Again this is not good for people.

The other forbidden food we now do not eat are Chinese Popsicles. These tasty frozen treats are fun for kids in the hot summer. Unfortunately we found out that they also upset our stomachs. When we stopped eating them we got better. These should be safe to eat because the formula should have been boiled before being frozen. However the resulting product is unsafe to eat, much to the chagrin of my kids.

You cannot survive long without clean water. We have taken chances with dubious bottled water in China but we would rather be prepared. If you run out of filtered water there is orange soda and bottled water. In the past orange soda has tasted awful but has been safe to drink. Maybe today’s hermetically sealed tetra pak drinks are safer than in the past? I do not know.