YINCHUAN, March 22 (Xinhua) -- "Sit down and have a cup of tea," said Feng Xiuhua, greeting guests at her home in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region while asking her son to prepare and serve tea.
"Now we have 'sweet water,' and our tea tastes better," said the 71-year-old resident of Zhouduantou Village in Hanjiaoshui Township in the city of Zhongwei, referring to tap water.
For Feng, life changed in 2020 when her new home gained access to tap water, bringing an end to the days of arduous water collection, long trips to fetch water, and chronic shortages.
The village is located in an arid belt in central Ningxia, where low rainfall and high evaporation once left locals facing severe water shortages. The township name Hanjiaoshui, which literally means "crying out for water," highlights the desperate yearning for water.
"Whenever it rained or snowed, we used every container we had to collect water," said Feng, recalling how families relied on rainwater collected in underground cellars.
Water from a deep well in her village was bitter and saline, and had to be mixed with stored rainwater to make it drinkable, she added. Those who arrived late to draw water from the well often found it already gone.
Across many arid rural regions in northwest China, such experiences were common for generations. Villagers waited anxiously for rain, built storage systems and transported water over long distances, often on foot or using animal-drawn carts.
In many rural families, men work on farms or migrate to work in cities, leaving women to bear the heavy burden of fetching water.
Ma Guolan, deputy Party chief of Yangling Village, Jingyuan County of Guyuan City, still remembers hauling water across mountains with her mother as a child.
They carried large buckets on a two-wheeled cart pulled by a cow along rugged mountain roads. One trip could barely supply their family of nine for three days.
"Once my mother went to fetch water right after farm work without having a meal," Ma said. "She lost strength on the way back. The cart slid down a slope and injured her foot."
Such accounts reflect a broader global challenge. As of 2024, 2.1 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water, according to the United Nations World Water Development Report 2026, Water for All People: Equal Rights and Opportunities, released by UNESCO on Thursday.
Women and girls are most likely to be responsible for water collection, exposing them to safety risks, especially in remote or insecure areas, and also causing physical strain and injury, the report said.
Sunday marks this year's World Water Day, which carries the theme "Water and Gender."
In rural areas in China's northwest, women no longer face such hardships. Their access to water was first improved through the Water Cellar for Mothers Program, then by water diversion projects and the rollout of clean tap water.
Launched in 2000, the philanthropic program supports rainwater collection and supply projects across the country, particularly in western China.
By 2023, nearly 140,000 rainwater cellars had been built, along with thousands of centralized water supply projects and safe drinking water projects for schools.
Large-scale water diversion projects and tap water networks now play a crucial role. In Ningxia, water has been diverted from the Yellow River for irrigation as well as for drinking since 2004. A supplementary water diversion project began operating in 2018, after which tap water was extended to local households.
"The first time I drank tap water, it tasted incredibly sweet," Feng said.
Over the years, access to water in Ningxia has improved significantly. Official data show that 99.6 percent of local rural households now have tap water, with 96.7 percent of residents covered by large-scale supply projects.
Nationwide, 96 percent of rural households have access to tap water by 2025, according to China's Ministry of Water Resources.
These changes have greatly eased the heavy burden that once fell on women in many arid western regions.
"We even have water heaters at home now," Feng said. "Young girls can take a shower every day. In the past, the whole family shared one basin of water to wash our faces."
Today, many rural households still keep old water cisterns to store rainwater for irrigation and other domestic uses, even though water supply is no longer a concern.
In some parts, improvements continue. "Our village has even built a new water purification plant, further improving the tap water quality," Ma said. ■
