At the home of 84-year-old Ding Baojian in Shichang Village in Songxian County, Henan Province, a shining drinking water tap is shrouded by a plastic bag. He carefully opened the tap, got a glass of water and passed it to me, saying proudly, “Our tap water is drinkable, and very sweet.” Not long ago, however, all the households living in the village still solely depended on the rainwater collected in an open-air water cellar, with fallen tree leaves and waste often floating on the surface. In 2017, during his visit to the village, Liu Dashan, Party committee secretary and chairman of CECEP, required the poverty-relief staff to “solve the local drinking water problem at all costs.”