Drinkable tap water? Oh sure, if you live at the treatment plant.
Actually, I’ve noticed that the water down in this small corner of southern Chaoyang is much cleaner than in the hole in Haidian we just escaped. Still wouldn’t drink it without boiling it first, though.
Actually, I have much the same feeling about the water here. The stuff that was coming out of the taps where I was in Fuzhou might’ve been called Hint of Water. It’s probably much cleaner here because the pipes in this building are Jiang Zemin Dynasty, whereas the newest ones in Fuzhou were probably Song Dynasty.
Ah, the old water dissolved in pollution trick. In Changsha I never asked where the fish came from because I regularly saw the “river” and “fish ponds” where the fish were probably raised, and a bit of creative suspension of disbelief was the only way to get through a meal involving fish. In Tianjin I just plain steered clear of anything fish-like.