Spring Water vs Tap Water

Since I moved to the new village, I have only been skimming the fringes of the mountains. As we shed our jackets to welcome longer day hours, new leaves and morning birds have been asking us to go deeper into the mountains to join their celebration for Spring. So we did.

Judging my recent long hours, I have decided to take a half day trek into the very gentle Tai Po Ngau. Soon we were walking into the woods with relaxing fragrance from unknown trees, on a path decorated with deep purple berries, springy human height fern shoots and small flowers of yellow, white, pinks, violets and blues. Monkey howls, magpie crows and cricket chirps disturbed the tempo of the butterfly dances and the flowing sound of the stream. Shiny gold lizards rushed to hiding as we intruded, rattling fallen leaves and triggering hoppers.

Halfway into the route we came to an easily accessible part of the upstream.

I used to drink right out the stream when I was trekking the mountains of the Pokfulam reservoir ¹ nearby where I lived when I was in high school.  The small water collection supplied water only to the vicinity districts but was the sweetest water in the city. It was the same water that came into our apartment throughout my high school and college years. The dark skin man who delivered panty hoses and bras to my mother for peddling always drank two glasses of it and said it was so sweet.

Now almost 40 years later this little stream called me to taste its sweetness. W. suggested that I should bring it back to taste against the filtered tap water with tea. Brilliant idea.

We tasted it using the freshly roasted Longjing that had rested for a week. Though the heat was still there, but the characteristic floral fragrance capable only in finer Longjing was extremely well rendered in the stream water, so was the complex tangy, salty bite interlaced with the rich, savoury “umami-ness” orchestrated in a tenor of refreshing pitches and deep seductive spiciness. As a matter of fact, I have never had such heightened taste experience for this tea before. All the taste characters were present in the tap water version, only at perhaps 1.5 to 2 grades below and flatter.

We were, including myself, stunt by the huge difference, and how beautiful the tea can be. The superiority of the water from this unknown little stream is amazing.

A similar test was actually done before about 10 years ago in the flagship store of my tea brand at that time ². A customer ( who is a friend now ) brought the most expensive spring water from Hokkaido to compare with the properly filtered and molecule re-aligned tap water in my shop. Ours won by a tiny bit. 10 years later now, an unknown little stream regains the championship for natural water, by a far margin.

Is this stream better than the crystal bright Hokkaido water? Or the tap water in Hong Kong degenerated?

I have been lucky to live in a city where public works have always been improving. However, sometimes it gets to a point where development causes irreversible damage to quality of life. Our water works is one such example.

Some years ago the government signed a contract with the nearby Guangdong province to supply us with water. Last year we paid over 4.5 billion ³ for 600 million cubic meter of water. ⁴ On the table, it was for the fear of water shortage, below it, who knows. Drop to drop, it is 260 times over of what the Singaporeans are paying the Malaysian ⁵, if you need to have a better picture of what the price means.

Besides money, water itself is the problem. While the southern part of China, such as Guangdong, is rapidly developing and urbanising, the need for water is huge. It’s own water sources are not coping with its own need, let alone selling to Hong Kong. In order for some people to get the fat water money, water from everywhere has to be gathered to make up for the total need. That includes polluted water.

In a country where environmental protection is not famous and ground water pollution only occasionally dealt with to satisfy the showcase needs of certain politicians, the quality of water that is piped down to Hong Kong has been notorious, to say the least. This water goes into our reservoirs. To make sure the quality is at least safe, a lot of treatment goes in it.

Safe it may be; sweetness not. The unfiltered water often smells chlorine and tastes rough.

Only a few districts in Hong Kong, small and separated from the large water grid, maintain the kind of quality I have known before  — that which I could drink directly off the stream and the dark skin man said so sweet.

In our new house, we have yet to install the water molecule re-alignment treatment piping as we had in the shop. This little piece of metal does count after all.

If your local water works has similar problems, do consider an aggressive filtration and water molecule recovery technology to make your water bright and tasty again. Alternatively, tank up to collect the rain ( San Francisco, I know ), or if it is not illegal in your country, bottle it from a nearby good water source, if there is one. That better cup of tea is really worth the trouble.

For me, I know I shall be carrying a bigger bottle next time I go to the mountains.