Schedule

weather forecastThe weather’s been pretty much perfect of late, warm but not humid during the daytime and pleasantly cool at night.   

Today I had my first class since June . Throughout the summer I have had various other projects going on, it’s been an interesting time and lots of things are still developing from this.   

The problem is that now that the semester has started,  I am almost overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do. For the next few months,  I’m not sure if I will be able to do it all. Technically it all fits in nicely, my schedule looks good, but realistically it might not be physically possible – only time will tell. 16 weeks to go!

New Cars

It’s become distinctly autumnal almost overnight, finally the hot humid air has gone replaced a welcome refreshing breeze. I give it 6-8 weeks before it starts to snow again – can’t wait! 🙂

It’s been a while since I took an early morning bus to the centre of town, but this morning, I couldn’t help noticing how many new cars were on the streets. I’d hazard a guess that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of new cars being driven out of the showroom every day.

There are some real nice motors on the streets of Changchun. I’ve never seen so many BMWs, Audis, Mercedes, and Buicks – you’d be forgiven for thinking that this city was full of millionaires.
In Changchun, the Audi 6 is probably the most popular luxury car, usually in black complete with blacked out windows. Also I am seeing more and more Japanese 4x4s, especially the gold coloured Lexuses (lexi?) and lots more Hondas.

People back home talk about ‘gridlock’ but I predict that within the next 5 years (or sooner) China is going to become one massive car park. Changchun is particularly bad as the road layout was designed in a time when traffic from cars wasn’t a consideration, and so there are many huge cross-road junctions and sets of traffic lights. If you have the money you can just take taxis everywhere – afterall they are cheap enough – and avoid the problems associated with maintaining a vehicle.

However, there is still a huge novelty value to owning a car as many families have never had the opportunity to do so before. Also there is massive social status and face value in being able to show others that you are rich, and I think this is factor most important to some. But in Changchun there is no real need beyond this to have your own transport, it is a small compact city with a half-decent public transport system. I would never buy my own car here.

I also wonder what kind of people can actually afford to buy such cars when the prices are still so high. To put this into perspective, a decent family car is about the same price as a large new apartment, and unlike an apartment, you will never recoup your money if you buy a car.
The average wage in Changchun is only 800-1000元 a month, maybe it is just that people have company cars or cars through finance deals or that they are filthy rich bandits.
For example a new VW Jetta costs 98,000元, Ford Mondeo 199,000元 and a Lexus 800,000元!

Hot

sleeping outside 

 Took this photo earlier today from my seat on the bus.  Not content with just opening the doors, this shopkeeper has gone one stage further by moving his bed and arm chair (see far left) out onto the pavement. 

Might consider doing this myself if it wasn’t that I lived on the 6th floor!  

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As I sit on my bed typing this I feel really uncomfortably hot and sticky.  My apartment is disgustingly hot; the air is stale and humid. 


 The temperature during the summer in Changchun is consistently hot, it’s easy to predict, and even when it rains it still remains hot.  I think many people would consider the summer weather here perfect holiday weather-  It doesn’t drop much below 25°at night and seldom breaks 35°during the day, with nearly always blue skies.
 

 I have found out what it’s really like to live in a hot climate (Yes I know it isn’t that hot compared to the rest of China, but it’s still like living on the Mediterranean). It sounds great on paper; holidaying in the sunshine enjoying the warmth, but the reality of living with this everyday is actually rather miserable.  I find it difficult to cope with the hot weather – not least because there is no air-con here (I find myself walking around the expensive department stores that do have AC)  but it makes me really tired and lethargic and all I want to do is fall asleep.  But on the plus side it’s easy to know what to wear;  I have been wearing shorts and sandals since mid-May and will continue to do so until mid-September, then like flicking a switch, the weather turns. 
 

Changchun is geared up to cope with the cold winters, and many of the apartments are not designed to facilitate air flow or draughts flowing through.  Newer apartments are starting to deal with this problem and have larger windows that are designed with this in mind, but the older places (most of Changchun) are not.  And so I am baking.   
 

So having lived in  both extremes,  I actually believe it’s easier to travel and do things during the freezing winter than it is now,  and that is despite wearing 6 layers of clothes, gloves, hat, scarf etc…      
 

rain rain rain

I think the rain season is here, the air is really damp there’s been some flash floods and the odd electrical storm. I like storms, and the storms here are great. I remember last year being caught in a storm that began with rain then moved on to hail stones. The hail became larger and more intense, I was forced to take cover, and it intensified to lumps of ice about the size of one of those large marbels that children play with. This only lasted for about 3 minutes, but it was so hard that when it stopped, the ground was white and covered with little balls. I foolishly tried put my hand out of the window to catch some of the hail, but It just bounced off my hand and hurt. If I had got caught outside, It could have caused some nasty injuries. This was a really strange experience and extremely localised (some of the students I was with said they had never seen anything like this in Changchun ) – this only affected part of the campus I was on, other parts were totally dry.

Cold?

Yesterday was pretty hot day, shorts and sandals required. Yet you’re be amazed at how much clothing many Chinese still wear. Not many people wear shorts, very few show any sort of skin – even if it’s boiling outside. I found myself asking ‘When do Chinese people actually get hot?’

hot day, lots of clothes hot day, lots of clothes!
I remember being on the Subway in Beijing last summer and feeling like I was going to do die, and many of the Chinese were wearing long sleeves, jackets and trousers!
Maybe it’s different in the southern provinces? Is this something China-wide? I’d like to get an answer to this?

A good example of this happened when I was sitting on a bus, sweating and feeling terribly uncomfortable, and the man next to me was wearing a shirt and heavy jacket. He looked fine, and wasn’t even sweating.
He’s probably still wearing his long johns too! It annoys me a little, when it’s 25ºC and people close the windows on the bus because they feel cold from the draught,
or they might think they will catch a disease from the breeze through the open window. It’s all very strange and difficult for me to understand, but perhaps it has something to do with not wanting to expose their skin to the sun. I know many Chinese people dislike what the sun does to the skin, here pale is considered ‘more beautiful’. I’m no sun god either, I dislike being in the sunshine for any amount of time, but if it’s a hot day I will wear fewer clothes – beacuse I will feel more comfortable.
Maybe Chinese people more susceptible to the cold than Westerners? Or more afraid of ‘catching a cold’ and so over compensate by wearing too much.
Maybe there is something wrong with me?
I know generally Chinese people are smaller, slightly built and thinner than westerners and perhaps this explains the need to wear more clothes to keep warm. But I am just as thin as a Chinese person (though taller) and the heat really gets to me- It can’t be biological (we are all human), It has to do with something else.

To reinforce this point, people often come up to me in the street, and ask (almost every day someone will ask me this) ‘ 你冷不冷?’ or ‘你冷吗?’ Are you cold? – And when I reply with 我当然 不冷!Of course I’m not cold! It is met with a mixture of laughs and that “aren’t foreigners strange” look!  🙂

Heatwave

It seems that the summer is here for good now, no more cold days.  Had a heatwave for the last 3 days, got up to 31ºC yesterday, it’s a dry heat and so not so oppressive.  Just the wind whips up the dust, and things get very dirty very fast. 

Street Repairs

Over the last few days, most of Changchun has become a building site, with roads and the large squares/roundabouts 广场 everywhere being dug-up for one reason or another. wei xing gua

The aim is to do it all at once – during the holiday – and be done by the time everyone has to go back to work. The idea makes sense, however there are some terrible roads in Changchun that are nothing more than dirt tracks, and yet the government choose to dig up existing roads that are okay.

 more construction at satellite square

It’s something that could never be attempted in a democracy, no one would stand for it- I guess that’s one of the plus points of the government not being accountable to the people.
If i want to go down to the shops, I have to walk for 10-15 minutes just to get to a road that isn’t being renewed, and the bus takes twice as long to get to its destination as the usual way is also under construction. Nobody seems to know exactly what roads/roundabouts/junctions are closed – seemingly nobody (not even the bus drivers know where to go) is told in advance of this – it just happens.

  So the May day holiday is almost over and so – finally – is the end of the winter. Things have greened up almost overnight, flowers have appeared and trees are beginning to go into blossom. The long underwear has at last been consigned to the wardrobe. 

Been spending my free time eating/drinking too much, meeting up with friends, and generally relaxing.  

hong pi The zha pi 扎啤 (draft beer) is now available (it’s only available outside the winter for some reason) and for 1元 a glass you can;t go wrong.  It comes in three varieties; huangpi 荒啤,hongpi 红啤 or heipi 黑啤 – yellow, red or black beer.   The yellow is regular lager, the red is like a sweet red wine and the black is a dark stout – and my favourite.
 

Did manage somehow to burn my arm at a hot pot restaurant, now I have two small red lines on my left arm to remind me of that fact!

Cold.

It’s freezing in my apartment. 🙁

For the last few days I have been wearing thermals with my large winter coat. Indeed as I type this, I am wearing my black ski-jacket and three layers of trousers, – and I still feel cold!

bbc forecast

It isn’t that cold outside, just gets a little below freezing at night. According to the weather forecast it’s pretty mild and much warmer than recent weeks.
But In the last week I have felt more cold than at any other time this winter, including when it was -30C outside.

It’s all because there hasn’t been any central heating since the 6th (well in my apartment anyway – earlier in others!)

Why?

Well, here April is considered by the city government to be ‘spring’. So the heating gets shut down. Of course, technically it is spring. Really it’s still winter; there are no flowers and the grass is still brown. Really it should be on for another month, but I guess it saves the government money, and that’s pretty important here.

It’s at times like these, I wish that I had bought that electric blanket, and do I remember it being like this last year too, but at the time, I put it down to my ancient dungeon of an apartment. Which had very small windows and was always cold!

Heating

Man its cold today, I’m sitting at my computer freezing my hands off. Was a little colder last week, but it feels colder tonight.

The heating isn’t on yet (don’t know why, usually is on all day!!) I can see ice crystals forming on the inside of my window. My thermometer says -23C which isn’t that bad; it’s just the lack of heating that is making things seem really cold!!
I’m very supicious of the state media’s weather reports. As i found out during the summer, they like to massage the statistics. For example according to the government weather reports the hottest it got last summer was 32C (on my thermometer it got up to 38C in theshade!!); I remember watching the TV and the maximum temperature being the same for two weeks!
So when they say it’s between -20 and -15 today, I minus another 5 degrees or so, and then you have the real temperature!

The heating system in Changchun is based on central boiler houses, dotted all around the city. They are easy to spot, just look for the huge plooms of smoke pouring out the high chimneys.
These bulildings look like power stations; they have a large red and white painted chimney and giant slag heaps of coal, for good measure. I assume the water is heated through the burning of the coal and then piped to the apartments. Which is highly inefficient, but it’s simple and primative and keeps lots of people in work!

At home, you have no thermostat or bolier to decide the heating level , it’s either on on off. So if it’s too cold, tough! Put on more clothes! Everyone in my apartment complex, pays a flat fee for the heating over the winter, depending upon the square metreage of their place.
At this moment I am beginning to regret having a top floor apartment, I feel as if the heat just goes straight out of the roof, and I wish i had some control over the level of heat within the apartment, as I touch my bedroom radiator it is slightly warm – and it should be too hot to touch!