Heating, Chinese Style

If you're in the typical Chinese apartment, you do not have control over the heating system. The heat is officially turned on one day in November, and snapped off on another day in March. They're usually the 15th of each month, but can vary a bit, I understand, from region to region. If you're lucky, you live in a building which "tests the system" as early as October 31st, which means your radiator pipes might leak forth a tiny amount of heat before mid-November. The dates are firm, and you will not get heat at any other time, even if there's a blizzard dropping two meters of snow right outside your window.

One thing to note: there's no thermostat. You don't control the heat: it controls you. You either have it or you don't. Your apartment might be very cold, while the person in the apartment next to you is so hot that s/he has to keep all the windows open at night. Appeals to the maintenance workers are useless. The concept of  "controlling the heat" is not really a part of the design in most buildings, although privately held apartments or very expensive housing MIGHT allow climate control.

Also, there is no heat in state-owned apartments and buildings south of the Yangtze. The most horrible weekends of my life have been spent in Wuhan in February, guest-lecturing at a university. On both occasions, it snowed like hell, and I stood on a cement platform in a cement building with my down coat, fur-lined boots, gloves, hat, muffler, merino long johns and other gear shaking with the cold in front of blue-faced students who couldn't even take notes as the ink had frozen in their pens.

Another thing to note: many air conditioners have a "heat" setting which you can use to ameliorate the conditions. Not all have this feature, but if you can choose an air conditioner with a heating option, do so: you will not be sorry. I'm not complaining about the heating situation here--it's just the way it is--and I'm grateful that I no longer live in a little place heated by a tiny-stove which burned funny round bricks which were treated with coal dust. Just be warned, that's all. Everybody wears long underwear, even in the chi-chi places, so pack a set if you're coming any time between October and April.

This post is inspired by the fact that it's March, and the maintenance workers decided that last night, around midnight, it was time to start shutting down the heat. The resultant shrieks and moans and rattling of pipes kept me and the two furry morons I live with awake for several hours. I am going to work in an unheated building today (they turned off the heat during Spring Festival on the grounds that the building might be empty for a few weeks--it wasn't) and they just haven't bothered to turn it on. Despite the fact it's shaping up to be a fairly warm day today, I will be in a tiny north-facing room with cement floors, and I have already laid out my arctic business outfit,  merino wool long johns,  fur-lined boots and all. Le chic, that is NOT me, but at least I won't be shivering.