On Halloween night, I heard water gurgling through the walls, ceilings, and floors of our apartment. Normally, this would be a cause for alarm. I read Harry Potter; I know where the basilisks live. But on that day, it was a welcome gurgle because it meant the central heating was coming on.
China still has laws about when certain parts of the country may turn on their heaters. Here it's November first. Other places, like Nanjing where I did a semester abroad, they don't have central heating, because southern China is supposed to be warm. (Yeah right.) You can use space heaters and other electrical heating devices, but if your building has central heating, it can't be turned on until a certain date. It's nice to be reminded every so often that you're in a communist country.
So they turned on the central heating. Now we can't get them to turn it off.
Our apartment is luxurious and has in-floor heating, which I was excited to hear about after learning about winter temperatures here that dip down to -20 or even -40. We'll be so nice and cozy in our home. Our 6 south-facing windows also help warm the place, too. Problem is, it's not that cold outside yet. But the heat's on, the sun's up, and we're baking in our little solar oven. We had the maintenance staff come turn off the in-floor heat, but they could only find the controls for half the house. So half the house is kind of normal now, but in the other half, we're still running the air conditioner just to keep from sweating to death.
I didn't anticipate this, moving to the coldest place on earth and everything.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
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2 comments:
I have the same problem here in Kyrgyzstan. We have to keep the windows open all winter because the apartments are so warm. But most people in the rest of the country live in houses with coal heating and they're lucky to keep them at 55-60 degrees (I know, because I lived in one last year).
Typical. That's just like work, cold in the summer and hot in the winter. Good luck!
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