Why boil water, this unique Chinese custom you know how much?

The ancient Chinese boiled water to "remove the miasma", this "remove the miasma" should be referred to is the meaning of sterilization.

The Chinese people and the Chinese cultural circle have long practiced drinking boiled water, which cannot be drunk directly, but must be boiled and drunk, and there is even a term for this, "a hundred boils are not poisonous".

The purpose of boiling water is simple: to get rid of microorganisms in the water and prevent infection. Ancestors did not know the principle, can only simply root out the experience to summarize. The theory that drinking raw water leads to disease is documented in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine.

Maybe some people will ask, then do Westerners drink water without sterilizing it? Why is it that only the Chinese have developed the habit of boiling water? If Westerners didn't sterilize their water, wouldn't they all die of disease?

Yes, Westerners do sanitize their water, but they don't do it at high temperatures. Instead, they use microbial fermentation to eliminate microorganisms, which is called "wine". Westerners have a long tradition of drinking wine, and unlike the Chinese who only drink at dinner parties, Europeans drink wine directly as their daily beverage, because water cannot be drunk directly, and they do not have the habit of boiling it to sterilize it, so they refer to wine as a substitute for water. Take a look at the American drama "Game of Thrones", every time there is a shot of a character drinking water in the drama, the glass is inevitably a glass of wine, not because they love drinking so much, but just because for them, there is only wine.

Napoleon required his troops to drink alcohol every day and not to allow raw water in the garrison to prevent infectious diseases. In this way, the conscious application of alcoholic beverages to prevent disease should be dated as far back as the Roman period, which is a thousand years old at a pinch.

Another is that, although ancient China prevailed in boiling water, but boiling water is to cost firewood, it is not possible for every household can afford to drink, most of the people still drink directly from the well, and modern Chinese people to develop and cool boiled water habit, mainly due to the early liberation of the Chinese government's efforts to promote.

One of the aspects of the patriotic health campaign was to improve drinking water hygiene.

When the war just stopped, China's economic level is not comparable to the United Kingdom and the United States, drinking water hygiene is difficult to ensure that the boiling disinfection is naturally the lowest cost, the highest feasibility of the method, and to date, this habit has long been engraved in our daily lives.

There is another reason, probably because the Chinese cultural circle, the prevalence of tea culture.