1. We drink only bottled water (or beer).
2. Tai-tai (my wife) washes all veggies, fruits and eggs in a bleach solution. Essentially, you fill the sink with water, and pour in a capful of Milton Sterilizing solution…or, you can look in the baby care aisle for bottle sterilizing solution. After letting set for 10 minutes, she then rinses the whole lot with bottled water. Yup…hoist up the 5 gallon bottle to the sink and pour yourself a sinkful. Drain and pat dry.
3. We shower, bathe, brush our teeth, wash hands, with the tap water. The water is generally heavy mineral, but the bacteria content is the thing to watch for. Washing yourself, you use soap…so it should kill the baddies. Brushing teeth, well, we only use it to rinse the brush…and that is HOT tap water.

The veggie, fruit and egg washing is the key for us. You might think, eggs? Yeah, the eggs we get are fresh from the farm and you need to scrub them…and then cook them until they are dead (no sunny-side up in Chiner), because of the bird flu concerns. Given all the issues we have read about in the USA recently with packaged spinach, etc., we just may carry the task of washing everything home with us whenever we move back.

Knock on wood…with all the precautions…we haven’t been gravely sick with intestinal issues during our (coming up on) 8 years here in the past 11 years.

But…when visiting this fair country…don’t ever eat a salad in a 2-bit restaurant. You may think it looks lovely, but you have no idea if they have done the above. Hotel restaurants tend to clean and wash things well for you…no worries.