Welcome to Tropical Shanghai. Today’s temperature will be -2 degrees.
According to official Chinese government regulations, if a city is located south of the Yangtze River it is considered tropical and therefore does not need to be heated in winter. Shanghai is located about one millimeter south of the Yangtze River, as can be seen from this map, stolen from the Wikipedia page on it.
Notice how the river conveniently goes waaaaay south just left of Chongqing. Now they are tropical down there, I’m sure. Up here in tropical Shanghai, we have snow. And poorly insulated buildings. And frequently unheated buildings. Like schools. And my students are wearing coats and hats and gloves in class. And now that I am sick (again), so am I. I had been wearing regular shirts (as one would, at work), wrapped with a shawl for a bit of warmth. Coats and gloves are awkward to teach in. However, Mrs Gu, the Year 2 classroom teacher, sternly reminds me every day that my lack of jacket indoors is firmly responsible for my bronchial issues. Not overwork, not viral strains or bacteria, not the persistently open windows blasting (fresh!) cold air into every unheated hallway. No, it was my lack of jacket indoors that floored me.
This is Mrs Gu. She really does love me in spite of my naivete about how illness is spread.
Yesterday, Shanghai decided that a nice little snowfall and a hint of plummeting temperatures would do us some good.
So, yes, we are officially tropical. We’ve been trying to keep our flat warm but have not been quite successful yet. I’m wrapped in my huge Turkish shawl and have my feet deep in my big felted Kyrgyz slippers but my toes are still numb and my fingers are stiff and I can feel draughts everywhere even though the heater is on. I ate hot soup for breakfast and I’ll eat it again for lunch because the warmth is just so damned lovely.
Kevin the Panda will show you what we are up against.
Did I mention it’s -2 out there? All you Canadians and Northern Europeans are probably laughing at me right now but you wouldn’t be laughing if you had unheated classrooms or uninsulated buildings or no central heating or windows so permeable that you can feel the cold from a foot away.
If anyone wants to send me a million dollars (or RMB or Euro or whatever) so I can go retire somewhere warmer, please email me or leave a comment here. I accept PayPal donations, Amazon gift certificates and cash. I also accept applications for Sugar Daddies, Sugar Mommies and any other combination on that theme. Even a Sugar cat would suffice, providing it had the cash to keep me in cocktails in Bali for a few months.
My mother is Asian and makes me wear a jacket indoors too! Hope you feel better soon.
Even if it’s warm inside? I can understand it here, esp. in public buildings like my university where you can see your breath in the hallways… I just hate having to be bundled up when teaching. Makes it so hard to move around!
I can’t believe how cold it is. The snow is interesting and fun . . . for the first 5 minutes. But for me, I am not used to it at all. I’m from sunny Southern California. I’ve been in Shanghai for about 6 months now.
Oh good- I thought I was being a total wuss, over reacting to a slight temperature drop. I’m cold! Very cold! And I’m in bed under 2 duvets, wrapped in a woollen shawl!
At least the lingerie model seems to have some sort of scarf.
Agreed- but she still looks chilly up there in her under garments, scarf or no.
Oh, I can relate. I mean, not now, as Bangkok is actually tropical and is always about 1,000 degrees. But when I was in Japan, my second apartment had no central heating, and barely any other kind of heating. My bedroom in the morning was as cold as it was outside–and it got to be around 0 degrees C at some points. I would huddle next to my little electric heater to get dressed. We had to leave the bathroom window open to prevent mildew, so it was also breezy in there. And of course there was no running hot water in the sinks, so I had to literally boil water at night to have warm water to wash my face. Sigh.
Oddly, I miss it sometimes. Who knew?
Stay warm!
I have yet to understand why buildings here aren’t insulated, nor are windows double glazed, nor is heating central. If you go north of the Yangtze– just a few hundred km to, say, Hefei- classrooms in public universities are toasty warm and, I’ve heard, so are all apartments as a matter of due course. People seem surprised when, every year, Shanghai becomes almost insanely cold. Not cold because it goes down to Harbin temps of -40 but, as you mentioned, it’s often as cold inside as it is outside.
We also have to leave the bathroom window open to keep out the mildew (which was a very real, asthma-triggering problem before, in our last flat) , and also the window in the little utility balcony off the kitchen so we don’t die from gas in our gas heater, whose pipe only goes out to there and not outside. Since two whole sides of the flat are made almost entirely of single paned window (so pretty to look out!), it’s proving to be quite hard to heat and to retain the heat.
We do have hot water in the very shallow bathroom sink (but not in the functional utility sink where I wash all the things I don’t want to be destroyed by our washing machine, which has a clothes-stretching spin cycle). However, it takes about 5 minutes for the hot water to reach the bathroom (and this applies to the shower as well) so we have to run the cold water for ages, waiting for a hint of lukewarm. My fingers are numb just thinking about it.
Oh my– yeah, you guys have gotten it bad too! It’s really amazing how Asian countries such as Korea and China don’t believe in heating their classrooms. It’s really a health hazzard for kids (and teachers)! I hear Japan is similar. What is the asian logic of this, other than to save on gas and electric bills?
Poor kids- poor us!
Back in early January, I had to spend a whole day doing speaking exams in one of the unheated classrooms, sitting for an hour and a half at a time for 6 hours. After the first hour, I felt quite cold and put on fuzzy fleece lined mittens; after a few hours, I couldn’t feel my feet at all; after four hours, I was in pain from the cold. It’s so much easier when teaching- at least I’m moving a lot! No wonder my kids are dressed in parkas and thick furry boots!
It is very useful and informative.I can’t believe how cold it is. The snow is interesting and fun . . . for the first 5 minutes. But for me, I am not used to it at all. I’m from sunny Pakistan.
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