Why Do Many Chinese People Drink Hot Water?
In much of China, hot or warm water — not iced water — is the everyday default at home, at work, on trains and in restaurants. The habit is often assumed to be ancient, but as a mass, nationwide practice it is roughly a twentieth-century development: it was promoted first as a way to make drinking water safe and then absorbed into ordinary life. It also varies by region and generation. This page explains the habit as culture and history; it does not present hot water as a treatment, a remedy or a health guarantee.
1. The everyday habit
In many parts of China, hot or warm water is the ordinary default drink — at home, in offices and in restaurants, where a pot of hot water or tea often arrives before anything is ordered. A vacuum flask (保温杯, bǎowēnbēi) is a familiar everyday object, carried to work or school and refilled with boiled water.
Chinese uses several names that English collapses into "hot water." 热水 (rèshuǐ) is heated or boiled water, usually drunk warm rather than scalding. 开水 (kāishuǐ) is water that has been boiled. 白开水 (báikāishuǐ) is plain boiled water with nothing added, and 凉白开 (liángbáikāi) is boiled water left to cool. The phrase non-Chinese speakers most often meet is 多喝热水 (duō hē rèshuǐ, "drink more hot water") — an expression of care that has also become a well-worn joke.
The point of these names is that the water is boiled, not merely warm — and that detail matters for the history.
2. History and living conditions
Boiling water can make unsafe drinking water safer. Public-health campaigns in twentieth-century China encouraged that practice, and the vacuum flask helped make boiled water available away from the stove. Those changes are one part of the story of today's habit. Tea culture and family routines are others. The precise timing and reach differed by place; it would be misleading to assign one national start date to a practice with many local histories.
Boiling water to brew tea has a much longer history than the modern household flask. The histories should be kept distinct: an old tea practice does not establish when every household began drinking plain boiled water each day. The World Health Organization's technical brief on boiling water explains the water-safety reason for boiling; it does not claim that hot water itself treats illness.
3. Region and generation
There is no single Chinese drinking habit. Families serve plain boiled water, tea, cold drinks and regional herbal infusions in different combinations. A thermos may be a familiar sight, while younger people also buy iced drinks. A person's choice can change with the weather and the occasion. These examples show why “Chinese people drink hot water” is a useful question but a poor universal rule.
4. More than one cause
Boiling has a clear water-safety purpose. Tea and hospitality add social meanings, while family habits keep a preferred drink familiar across generations. Traditional explanations about warm and cold foods may also shape how people talk about water. These are different kinds of explanations: the safety benefit of boiling is a testable public-health claim, while customs and preferences describe what people do and value. None of them makes warm water a treatment.
5. "Drink more hot water" is not a health promise
Because the phrase 多喝热水 (duō hē rèshuǐ) is offered so often — for a cold, a sore throat, an upset stomach, or simply as a sign of concern — it can look like medical advice. In everyday use it is closer to a way of saying "I hope you feel better," and it is frequently mocked as the last resort of an unromantic partner.
It is worth separating three things that get mixed together. First, the habit itself: drinking hot water is an ordinary cultural practice, neither required nor forbidden. Second, a traditional claim: in Chinese medical tradition, cold drinks are often said to harm digestion and warm ones to aid it . This is a long-standing belief within a cultural system; modern research has not established that drinking hot water treats or prevents any specific condition, and this page makes no such claim. Third, a separate safety topic: the temperature of drinks. Health authorities treat this on its own terms — the WHO's cancer research agency has classified drinks above about 65°C as "probably carcinogenic" to humans, on the basis of evidence about oesophageal cancer — and whether, or how, that applies to an individual is a medical question, not a cultural one. This page gives no drinking-temperature advice, and the fact that very hot drinks are treated as a safety issue is not an argument for or against the ordinary habit of drinking warm water.
In short: "drink more hot water" is a cultural expression, not a treatment recommendation, and the age of a tradition around warm drinks does not by itself make them medicinal.
6. What this page does not do
This page explains a daily habit and where it came from. It does not claim that hot water improves health, aids digestion or treats any condition; it does not tell you what temperature to drink, how much water to drink, or whether to drink hot or cold water; it does not assess your body type or constitution; and it does not recommend any brand, flask, herb or product. Statements about cold drinks "harming the stomach" are traditional attributions, not measured effects. Anything to do with your health is a matter for a qualified professional.
Sources
- World Health Organization, Boil Water (2015) — explains boiling as a way to reduce waterborne pathogens.
- International Agency for Research on Cancer, Drinking Coffee, Mate, and Very Hot Beverages (2016) — addresses the separate issue of very hot beverage temperature.