Sunday 30 December

The weather forecast for this week

It’s hard to ignore the cold now, with daytime temperatures hovering between 3 to 10 degrees, and nighttime temperatures from 0 to -6 degrees. The problem is that the temperatures are only slightly higher in the classrooms which are not heated.

Student accommodation

As I’ve mentioned before, for good heath, Chinese people leave windows and doors open, and so sometimes the wind blowing through the classroom can be pretty bracing.

Students now arrive for the 8am class with breakfast that they’ve picked up on the way. No-one makes a separate trip to the canteen before class, it’s too cold. Remember, their dormitories have no heating – I don’t know how they do it.

So the class begins with breakfast, students sitting in thickly padded jackets, ear warmers and hand warmers, cuddling close together. They use the power-points in the room to heat small fluffy liquid-filled warmers that they use to combat the cold. Ugg boots (Chinese fashion versions) are incredibly popular – they can be worn with anything. Class warm-up activities have taken on a whole new meaning now.

Workmen on a rare sunny day

Most of China is still a developing country, and possibly years of deprivation (and/or maybe Confucian ethics) has built a kind of stoicism or tolerance that we would find unacceptable. 

For example over the last three weeks, builders have been jack-hammering up the ground level of this building and completely redoing the plumbing. They work 7 days a week, starting shortly after dawn, working in the cold and rain. 

No-one in the building complains about the noise or disruption…it’s just part of life. Shopkeepers sit all day and into the evenings, huddled in their stores, with minimal lighting and no heating – and it’s still not the middle of winter yet.

You can just imagine the absolutely massive increase in energy consumption that would occur if China implemented heating and cooling in all buildings! Although by 2008 figures China was the highest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions, it’s no wonder that the per capita carbon footprint of Chinese people is about a quarter of our own – and we have essentially outsourced our manufacturing (and its associated emissions and waste) to countries like China as well.