Why Do Chinese People Drink Hot Water — Even in Summer?

If you have spent any real time in China, you have already met this habit. You ask for water at a restaurant and a cup of plain hot water arrives, steam coming off the top. There is a thermos on every desk in the office. At the train station, one tap is marked 开水 (kāishuǐ) and there is always a line of people filling cups and instant noodle bowls. Nobody around you finds any of it strange.

I grew up in China and never once questioned it. My grandparents kept a large thermos in the kitchen and my parents carried insulated cups to work. It felt so normal that I never considered it a cultural habit until foreigners started asking about it.

Hot water was just water. The first time I realized it was unusual was when a foreign friend asked why the restaurant had no ice. Until that moment it had never occurred to me that boiling water before drinking was not the default everywhere in the world.

For a lot of Western visitors this is one of the first small culture shocks, and it turns out to be one of the most searched questions about China on Google. Where is the ice? Why is the water hot when it is sweltering outside? The short version is that hot water in China is not really about temperature. It is about a century of public health, a layer of traditional medicine, and a daily habit that three generations grew up inside. Here is what is actually going on.

Why Do Chinese People Drink Hot Water? The Short Answer

Most Chinese people drink hot or warm water out of habit, not because they think it over each time. The habit has three roots. The oldest is traditional medicine, which treats cold drinks as hard on the body. Probably the biggest historical influence was public health: for most of the twentieth century, the only safe water was water you had boiled yourself. The newest is wellness culture, where a thermos of warm water counts as basic self care.

None of these on their own would be enough. Together they turned boiled water into a default. A Chinese person reaching for hot water is doing roughly what a Western person does when they reach for a cold drink from the fridge. It is just the normal thing.

The Hot Water Vocabulary You Will Actually Hear

How do you say hot water in Chinese?

Water in Chinese is not one word. The temperature and how it was prepared change what you call it, and these terms come up constantly once you start listening for them.

The one to remember is báikāishuǐ. When a Chinese friend says they are just drinking water, this is almost always what they mean: water that was boiled and is now plain, warm or cool. If you want cold water in a restaurant, the phrase is bīngshuǐ, and you may still need to ask twice.

Where the Habit Came From: Boiled Water and Public Health

The deepest root of the habit is safety, not wellness. For the first half of the twentieth century, tap water in much of China was not safe to drink. Cholera, typhoid, and dysentery were common, and boiling was the cheapest reliable way to kill what was in the water.

The push did not start in 1952. The Chinese Communist Party had already promoted boiled water in base areas before 1949, and in the Red Army it was treated less as a personal preference than as part of military discipline. Hot water also became visually tied to revolutionary daily life through the enamel mug, or 搪瓷缸 (táng cí gāng). When cadres fanned out across the country after 1949, they carried both the mug and the habit with them.

The new government then helped turn boiled water into a nationwide public-health habit. During the Patriotic Health Campaign (àiguó wèishēng yùndòng), launched in 1952, public-health messaging encouraged households to drink boiled water rather than untreated water (source). With literacy still limited in many rural areas, the instruction was reinforced through posters, slogans, schools, and factories, which helped make it memorable and repeatable.

The infrastructure followed the message. From the 1950s onward, many schools, factories, dormitories, and public institutions provided access to communal hot water, often through a 开水房 (kāishuǐfáng), a hot-water room where people filled their thermos flasks during the day. Many people who grew up in China before the 2000s still remember the routine: carrying a thermos, lining up for boiling water, and seeing the old floral-patterned thermos flask sitting in the corner of the kitchen.

Drinking boiled water was not just a preference. For many families, it was a practical way to avoid getting sick, repeated daily for decades until it stopped feeling like a choice at all.

Why Chinese Hot Water Is Really About Trust

Here is the part that explains why the habit did not fade once cities got safe tap water. For most of modern Chinese history, boiling water was not a wellness choice. It was a safety choice. You boiled because the alternative could make you sick, and that lesson got passed down hard.

When the infrastructure improved, the trust did not catch up at the same speed. A lot of people still do not fully believe their tap water, even where it now meets safety standards, so they keep boiling out of caution as much as habit. The generation raising children today learned this from parents who learned it as survival. The reason for boiling has mostly gone away in the cities. The habit outlived the reason, the way habits usually do, and what looks like a quirky preference is really culture carrying forward a memory of when water could not be trusted.

What Does Duo He Re Shui Mean?

If you date or befriend someone Chinese, you will eventually hear 多喝热水 (duō hē rèshuǐ, drink more hot water). It is the standard thing to say when someone is unwell, tired, or in pain.

Headache? Drink more hot water.

Stomach ache? Drink more hot water.

Period cramps? Drink more hot water.

Among younger Chinese, the phrase has also become a small joke about lazy comfort. A boyfriend who answers every problem with duō hē rèshuǐ is the type who means well but is not actually helping. On Chinese social media, telling someone to drink hot water is shorthand for advice that costs nothing and does nothing. The phrase carries real care and gentle mockery at the same time, which is a very Chinese combination.

Behind the joke is a genuine practice, especially for menstrual cramps. Warmth on the lower abdomen is one of the oldest home remedies in China, and a hot water bottle is still standard equipment in many households. It is simple, inexpensive, and provides comforting warmth, which is why it never really disappeared.

Growing up, it was common to see different sizes around the house. Smaller hot water bottles were often tucked under blankets to warm cold feet in winter, while longer versions with ultra-soft covers are a newer, more comfortable option for placing across the stomach or lower back during cramps or chilly evenings.

The Traditional Medicine Side: Warm Versus Cold

Traditional Chinese medicine sorts food, drink, and even body states into hot and cold, and a balanced body leans warm. Within that framework, cold drinks make the body work harder, slow digestion, and are especially discouraged for women, after meals, and during recovery from illness.

You see the belief most clearly around childbirth. The postpartum month, 坐月子 (zuò yuèzi), comes with a long list of rules, and avoiding cold water and cold food is near the top. New mothers drink warm water and warm soups, sometimes for weeks. Many older relatives extend the same logic to everyone: cold water with a meal is seen as a small mistake your body pays for later.

Also read: Chinese Pregnancy, Wedding, and Funeral Superstitions

It is worth being honest about the evidence. The claim that warm water has broad health benefits over room temperature water is mostly cultural belief, not settled science, and for healthy people plain hydration matters far more than temperature. The cultural force is real even where the medical case is thin. People are not running studies before they pour a cup. They are doing what their family always did.

What Benefits Do Chinese People Believe Hot Water Has?

These are the benefits people in China most often attach to hot water, with an honest note on what the evidence actually supports. The short version: hot water is comforting and harmless, but most of the bigger claims are belief rather than proof.

If you take one thing from the table, let it be this: drink hot water because you like it and it feels good, not because you expect it to fix your metabolism.

Why Do Chinese People Drink Hot Water in the Morning?

Morning is the most ritualized time for hot water. A lot of people, especially the older generation, drink a glass of warm water before they eat anything, sometimes with a spoon of honey or a few goji berries.

The traditional reasoning is that warm water wakes the system gently and gets things moving after a night of sleep. The practical reasoning is plain rehydration, since you lose water overnight, and that part is true for everyone regardless of culture.

The habit also passes down strongly: if your grandmother started every morning with warm water, you probably absorbed it without deciding to.

And lately the practice has picked up a modern wellness gloss, with younger Chinese and now plenty of Westerners treating morning warm water as a small grounding ritual before coffee.

Why Hot Water Even in Summer?

This is the one that breaks Western brains. It is the peak of summer, the kind of heat that has everyone else reaching for something cold, and your Chinese friend is still sipping hot water from a thermos.

Why?

The traditional answer is that hot water makes you sweat, and sweating is how the body actually cools itself, so a hot drink is seen as a smarter way to handle heat than an icy one that only feels cooling for a minute. Whether or not the science fully backs that up, the belief is consistent: cold shocks the system, warm supports it, summer included. In practice, plenty of people compromise with liángbáikāi, boiled water cooled to room temperature, which feels safe and traditional without being hot.

This is the part I remember most from childhood. My grandmother boiled a big kettle every day and kept it in a thermos, where the water stayed scalding for hours. The first few times I came home from school thirsty and poured a cup, I burned my tongue. So she started pouring some out early into a mug and letting it sit, so that by the time I got home it had cooled into liángbáikāi, drinkable and safe. In summer she sometimes dropped in a few dried chrysanthemum flowers with a little rock sugar, and a tired kid was far happier reaching for that than for a bottle of soda.

The same logic also explains the restaurant experience. Sit down at a Chinese restaurant and the default water is warm or hot, often a pot of plain tea. Ask for water and you may still get it warm. Ice exists in big cities and Western chains, but it is not the assumption, so if you want a cold drink you usually have to order a bottled one. For the rest of these table-level surprises, our guide to Chinese table manners covers the lazy Susan, the toasting, and who pours whose tea.

Why Are Westerners So Confused by Chinese Hot Water?

The confusion is almost always the same scene. A traveler or exchange student sits down, asks for water, and gets a steaming cup. They assumed water meant cold water, because where they come from it always does. The mismatch is not about the water. It is about two different defaults meeting.

For Westerners, the default is cold. The fridge, the ice machine, and the glass of iced water on every restaurant table are so normal that nobody notices them as a choice. For Chinese people, the default is boiled, for all the reasons above. Neither side is doing anything strange to itself. Each is just surprised the other does it differently.

Once you understand that, the habit stops looking like a riddle. It is not that Chinese people dislike cold water in some deep way. It is that warm water is the thing they reach for without thinking, the same way you reach for ice. Noticing the difference is a small sign you are paying attention to how the country actually runs.

Thermos Culture: From Boiler Rooms to Goji Berries

The thermos is the physical form this whole habit takes. The old floral-pattern flask gave way to the modern insulated cup, the 保温杯 (bǎowēnbēi), and it is genuinely everywhere: on desks, in bags, in car cup holders, on the subway.

In 2017 the thermos had a strange cultural moment. A photographer posted a picture of Zhao Mingyi, the longtime drummer of the rock band Black Panther, holding a thermos, with a caption about how the iron-tough rocker of the old days now walked toward him cradling an insulated cup. The post went viral, and the thermos became a symbol of middle age arriving. Online, people joked that the only thing standing between you and a midlife crisis was a thermos with goji berries soaking in it. The post drew over fifteen million reads. Zhao later clarified that his thermos actually held jasmine tea, not goji.

The joke worked because it was true to a pattern. For a while the thermos read as a marker of getting older, the moment you trade cold beer for warm goji tea. But the picture has shifted. Gen Z in China has leaned hard into 养生 (yǎngshēng, low-key wellness), and a thermos of warm water with goji or chrysanthemum is now something a twenty-three-year-old carries without irony. The thermos went from grandpa to self care in about five years.

If you want to actually adopt the habit, the cup matters more than people expect, because a good vacuum flask keeps water drinkable-warm for most of a day. The desk-and-commute version most people quietly upgrade to is a Zojirushi stainless steel travel mug, with a flip lid you can open one-handed and insulation that lasts from morning to late afternoon. For camping, road trips, van life, hiking, or a full day away from any kettle, the larger, near-indestructible Stanley Classic bottle is the one to get when you want serious heat retention and a bottle that can take a beating.

The Hot Water Trend Goes West

Here is the twist almost nobody saw coming. The habit Westerners once found baffling is now a wellness trend in the West.

On TikTok, creators have built a whole aesthetic around traditional Chinese medicine habits, sometimes called becoming Chinese, and drinking hot water sits at the center of it: warm water before coffee in the morning, a thermos sipped through the day, no ice. The same people who would have asked why the water was hot are now thanking Chinese culture for the tip.

The signs were there earlier. In Hong Kong and among diaspora families, ordering hot water with lemon at a Western restaurant has been common for decades, to the point that some waiters started calling it a Chinese martini. What changed is that the practice crossed over from something done by Asian grandmothers to something with a hashtag. It is a small example of a bigger pattern worth watching: Chinese everyday habits being rebranded as wellness once they reach the West.

How to Boil Water Like a Local, at Home and Traveling

The boiler room is mostly gone, replaced by a kettle in every home. The 烧水壶 (shāoshuǐhú), a stainless electric kettle, is one of the first things a Chinese household sets up, and it runs several times a day: morning water, tea, instant noodles, washing a baby bottle. Many homes and most offices also keep a hot and cold water dispenser, the 饮水机 (yǐnshuǐjī), so hot water is one button away.

The habit travels too. This is why long-distance trains in China have a hot water tap in every carriage, and why the instant noodle is the national train snack. Hotels keep a kettle in the room as standard. If you are setting up a kitchen or a dorm and want the local default, a fast stainless electric kettle covers the daily routine of tea, noodles, and a thermos refill before you head out. For hotel rooms and trips, a small travel kettle with overheat protection is the packable version of the carriage hot water tap.

Before you pack: Check the Plugs and Voltage Used in China

From here, the natural next step is what goes into the cup. Plain hot water is the base, but for most people the upgrade is tea, and the way Chinese people drink tea every day is its own quiet system. We cover that in our guide to Chinese tea culture.

Frequently Asked Questions

Found This Useful?

If this answered something you had always wondered about China, send it to the friend who keeps asking why their Chinese coworker never touches the office ice machine.

Read further:

• Daily Habits That Surprise Visitors
• What Gifts Should I Avoid Giving a Chinese Person?
• Chinese New Year Traditions Beyond the Red Envelopes