Is the food and water safe in China?Will we need face masks?Half the people and two-thirds of the country’s farmland are in the parched north—mainly in the Yellow river basin. In Beijing there is just 100 cubic metres per person per year. The water table there has fallen by 300 metres in two decades. Wen Jiabao, a former prime minister, was barely exaggerating when he said water shortages “threaten the very survival of the Chinese nation”.

Dear Bernard,

Greetings from Sophie, Top China Travel!
Thank you very much for your questions as below,

Is the food and water safe in China?Will we need face masks?Half the people and two-thirds of the country’s farmland are in the parched north—mainly in the Yellow river basin. In Beijing there is just 100 cubic metres per person per year. The water table there has fallen by 300 metres in two decades. Wen Jiabao, a former prime minister, was barely exaggerating when he said water shortages “threaten the very survival of the Chinese nation”.

Well noted that you are concerned about the food, water and air pollution in China and thank you very much for your kind concerning.

@Food and water during our tour
Noted that there are some reports about the food safty in China and well understand your worries.
In our tours, we arrange our clients to have meal at legal and formal hotels or restaurants. Therefore, we have never met any clients who had food safe problem so far. Billions of foreign visitor travel to China every year.
since our tours on private basis, it is more flexiable for us to meet the clients' flavor and requests.

Regarding to water, I could talk to you personally. As an ordinary citizen in China, we generally drink the boiled water without sickness. Therefore, that means our drinking water is safe, although it is not good enough to drink directly .
But the bottled water is better treated. It can be drunk directly. We only offer bottled water to our clients.
If the clients are still worried about the bottled water, there are imported bottled pure water sold in supermarket in some large cities. Our guide could show them to buy.

@Air pollution
This is also a problem we are also concerned about nowadays.
But the air pollution mainly focus in North China in winter. It is easy to see white cloud and blue sky from Spring in fine day.
Generally speaking, we suggest our clients avoid winter, which is also the low tourism season in China and views are not as good as other seasons. In Winter, it is better to ware a face mask in North China outside.


We noted that you might read some reports abou the food and water safe as well as pollution in China, but that is not real because it is exagerated by the medias to call for people to protect environment and cherish water.

As you know, China is a developing country with the largest population in the world. China is also the country who develops fastest. Therefore, it will be very resource consuming. As the 2nd economic giant, it is not hard to find modern cities developed in China with good infrastructure. It makes China could service for bilions of tourists from other countries every year.

Therefore, food and water safe is really not a problem in China.

Hope the above is clear and helpful. If you plan to visit China, please do not hesitate to contact with us and offer us below information so that we could work out a program for you.
1. When will you plan to travel to China?
2. How many of you will travel to China?
3. Which cities are you interested in to visit?
4. What kind of hotels will you hope to stay during the tour? 3 star standard hotel, 4 star 1st class hotel or 5 star deluxe hotel?
5. Any other special requests on food, tour and accommodation?