Digging

When it comes to accounting for this gargantuan cultural difference, many Chinese people have a variety of intriguing theories.

One argument is that it is the result of practices which have been inherited as part and parcel of China's "cultural DNA." "The Chinese people are used to having hot beverages: hot water, tea, and soup. In the past, we even drank hot wine," said Chen Mingyuan, an expert on cultural exchanges between China and the West.

"This habit is an outcome of the thousands of years of our history and civilization, and it is embedded into our genes," said Chen.

This practice probably dates back to the ancient times when pottery was created, according to Chen. Pottery was the next landmark creation after human beings first learned to use fire. It was a merger of fire and earth. With it, human beings had a container for water that wouldn't leak or became soaked through and disintegrate. It was universally used by all major civilizations across the world.

Although both the ancient Chinese and Western people used pottery, from the offset, there was a very big difference in how such ceramics were historically employed.

The various pottery items of the ancient Egyptian and Greek worlds displayed in the museums of Western countries today are all simple containers. There was no artifacts used for boiling water such as those dating back to the time of ancient Chinese civilizations, said Chen.

The use of pottery to heat water was an innovation unique to the Chinese. It is from this era that the Chinese nation formed the habit of drinking hot water, a practice still in existence today.

Another argument holds that the different drinking habits arise as a result of different dietary practices. In Chinese medicine, it is held that different types of food correspond to the qualities of "heatiness" (internal heat) or "coldness" (internal cold).

In their diet, American people eat a lot of steak, seafood and other types of meat, which contain an abundance of calories. Thus, they need to drink cold water to cool down their bodies from the dryness caused by eating meat. On the contrary, Chinese people eat more vegetables than their Western peers. Therefore, they need to drink hot water to warm the stomach and drive away the coldness.

Zhu Xun's story is an excellent example of this. She went to Paris to study for a Master's degree after graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Beijing. After completing her study, she stayed and worked in Paris. Now aged 34, she is mother of two boys.

"I have preferred vegetables over meat since childhood. Also, I wanted to keep slender, so I ate very little meat. And I never drank cold water, which would cause me to have a stomachache. But things changed completely after I settled down in France," she said.

"After I came to France, I found there were barely any vegetables but plenty of cheese and meat at the dining table. I had no choice but to eat meat. The thing is, after eating steak and cheese, when I drank hot water, I found it to be a very uncomfortable sensation. The hot water smelled scented and was hard to swallow down," she said.

"On the contrary, when I drank cold water, both my tongue and my stomach felt good. After some time, I got used to drinking cold water," she said. "No wonder there is an old saying: 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.' Following the local people's eating and drinking habits is the right choice to make if you want to adapt to the environment of a new country."

Gradually, she became completely accustomed to the French diet. But the interesting thing was, when she had vacations in Beijing, she would soon resume her old habits and found herself easily able to fluctuate between the drinking practices native to both cultures.

"So I have concluded that Chinese drinking habits are a product both of one's native physical features and the structure and consistency of the food they are eating," she said.

Traditional Chinese medicine also supports the practice of drinking hot water. "Compared to cold water, warm water is closer to the body's temperature. The nutrition it provides can thus be more easily absorbed," said Yang Li, a traditional Chinese health expert at the Xiyuan Hospital of China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing.

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