Yunong Zhou sent me the following signs from China:
Before providing transcription and translation of these two signs, a little bit of cultural background is necessary. My experience, from living and travelling in China for more than forty years and from having married into a Chinese family, is that Chinese people have traditionally not liked to drink cold water (or cold milk, for that matter), but strongly prefer hot water (and hot milk). They give lots of reasons for their preference, such as that it is safer, tastes better, is less likely to upset the stomach, and so forth. Consequently, it has been customary — and comforting — to have some means to provide hot, boiled water in buildings such as offices, hotels, hospitals, and dormitories.
In the old days, every hotel room was provided with large thermos bottles full of piping hot water. But where did the hot water come from? A room with a large boiler where people would go to fill up their thermos bottles (or where the staff would do it for them). That's what these two signs are about. Nowadays many modern buildings no longer have a special room with a large boiler for making hot water. Instead they come with electric kettles in each room, though more and more modernized people are willing to drink bottled water, which is not hot.
The first sign says kāishuǐ fáng 开水房 ("room for boiling water"), but the English translation parses it thus: kāi shuǐfáng.
The second sign reads kāishuǐ jiān 开水间 ("room for boiling water"), but the translation parses it thus: kāi shuǐ jiān.
To complete this brief introduction to the culture of boiled water, I'll add a few more related words:
cháshuǐ 茶水 — still available free in many airports and train stations, this is extremely diluted tea; basically boiled water with but the slightest amount of tea flavor and color. Superficially, the name seems to mean the same thing as German Teewasser, but the latter — I think — signifies "boiled water for infusing tea", though I may be wrong about that. In Japanese, we have the expression o chanomizu お茶の水 ("honorable tea water"); there's a neighborhood in Tokyo that goes by that name, and there's even an Ochanomizu University, one of two national women's universities in Japan.
lěng kāishuǐ 冷开水 — boiled water that has been allowed to cool down, the idea being that, if you're going to drink water that is not scalding hot, you should at least boil it first anyway
shuǐ kāile 水开了 — lit. "water has opened", i.e., "the water has boiled / is boiling"
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