Shanghai'd

Big Bottle of Water.
No one drinks the tap water in Shanghai, not even the locals. We have even been brushing our teeth with bottled water to try to defer the inevitable case of the runs that is bound to strike at some point (but fortunately, has not yet). All over the city, skinny young men pedal 5 gallon water bottles on the back of their bikes for home delivery. Our goal for today was to track one of these guys down and get him to deliver to our apartment where we have an empty hot/cold water dispensor waiting. With no English (of course) and our limited Chinese, we were able to figure out that the going rate for a da ping shui is 16RMB ($2), plus 30RMB for the initial bottle deposit. We gave our address and was told the delivery boy would be by in 1 hr. 30 minutes later, he arrived and dropped it off. After 15 minutes of fiddling with the seal and a few spilled drops, we were set up with clean hot and cold water on tap. Doesn't sound teribly impressive given that in the US all you have to do is flip the faucet on, but in China, everything is an achievement.