The Price of Playing in the Beitou Stream to Beat the Heat: Avoid the Hidden Hazards and Protect Your Body

Recently, the author witnessed an unbearable scene at the Beitou Stream. An older man, right beside the walkway of an open public area, stripped completely naked without any cover, then walked along the banks of the Beitou Stream bare-bottomed and exposed, before finally jumping into a wider stretch of the stream in the distance to play in the water and beat the heat, completely disregarding whether it would affect other people’s appetites.

Let us set aside for now whether turning a place for family enjoyment into his own nudist camp constitutes the offense of public indecency; I would rather talk about the real condition of the Beitou Stream.

The Beitou Stream should originally have been a clear and beautiful place, for people to cool off and relax under the blazing summer sun, and even, when the mood struck, to gulp down the cold, refreshing stream water. Yet reality is far removed from our expectations.

In fact, since the Japanese colonial era, the Beitou Stream began to be occupied by Japanese merchants and operated on a large commercial scale. The stream became a channel for many hot spring hotels to discharge wastewater, causing the water quality to become extremely poor, filled with various bathing chemicals and human waste and other undesirable refuse.

These pollutants cause serious contamination of the local water quality and pose potential risks to human health. Besides skin contact possibly triggering allergic symptoms, contact with the oral mucosa or drinking the water could even cause health problems such as gastrointestinal infections.

Our government has in fact long since set up many signs along the stream warning people not to enter the water, yet many people turn a blind eye to these warnings.

Now that summer vacation is approaching, in order to protect our health and the environment, we should avoid soaking in the Beitou Stream to beat the heat. Despite the high temperatures and hot weather, we should look for other safer, clearer water sources to cool off. For example, you can go to properly treated, legitimate hot spring facilities or swimming pools, which provide safe and clean water quality, allowing us to enjoy the fun of the water with peace of mind.