Winter is coming………….

It’s getting a little colder now, in the low 60s Fahrenheit; maybe in the 50s at night.  The only outward sign of approaching winter is people wearing a few more sweaters and jackets and heavier clothing in shop windows.  Windows and doors stay wide open as they will all year no matter the temperature.  I saw the first toilet seat covers selling today, another sign of the coming cold.  There isn’t much heat anywhere so people with western style toilets used thick cotton or wool seat covers to keep their asses from freezing when they hit the cold plastic or wooden seat.  I can say from experience that they make a big difference.  There is no relief for those relying on squat toilets.  Your ass just freezes, but the squat toilet never encouraged lingering anyway.

Where there is heat it comes from dual purpose heater/air conditioners which the Chinese refer to as air conditioners even if they only heat.  They’re wall mounted near the ceiling where they exist and operate with a hand-held remote.  If you don’t read Chinese characters, which I certainly don’t, it takes some experimentation before you figure out how to get heat instead of cold. Most Chinese operate them with windows and doors still wide open.  No amount of logic sways them.  It’s a fresh air thing that trumps any sort of comfort or energy efficiency.  There are any number of traits of the Chinese that boggle the mind and defy a westerner’s concept of logic.

People start wearing jackets, sweaters and coats indoors now – never changing when they come indoors since the temperatures stay about the same inside and out.  A crowded classroom will generate a little heat, but in the middle of winter in Shanghai it’s never enough to cause shedding of outerwear which includes hats, gloves and scarves.  I never get used to it.

The Chinese just shrug and tell you it’s winter now and you are supposed to be cold – and properly dressed.

Shanghai is humid all year round with a few nice, dry days here and there.  The humidity amplifies the cold – it goes right through you and given the lack of heat in most indoor settings, it’s tough to shake a chill once it hits.  Bathrooms are cold water affairs so washing your hands brings no hot water and there is rarely a dryer and more rarely any paper products so wet hands in cold air as you shake and dry that way doesn’t help.  I don’t live in the foreigner “bubbles” or frequent western style hotels too often so I live mostly like a local and can attest to an incredible tolerance of discomfort.  Fortunately, my apartment has the heater/air conditioning units which if you run them full tilt most of the time in winter can take off the chill, but not the layers since they rarely generate enough heat.  People in China literally layer up – everybody wears long-johns as at least one layer – and people get perceptively bigger as they insulate themselves.

This will be my third year coming up in Shanghai and there are only two good periods of decent weather – late September to early November and again from maybe April to the end of May.  The rest of it sucks.  I promised myself last winter that I’d never winter here again, but hey — who keeps resolutions anyway.  I had all kinds of good plans that went to hell.

Tomorrow I’ll fly three hours to Chengdu in Sichuan Province, due west of Shanghai.  I’ve got a friend there who has been bugging me to come visit and I figured what the hell.  It’s a girl I met in Xiamen when I first arrived who worked in the local supermarket (as opposed to the other one that caused me so much angst and still does in a lingering sort of way).  Anyway, at the time, she was my first foray into Chinese culture and customs.  She spoke no English and me no Chinese which in retrospect generated some ridiculous attempts at conversation.  She has since picked up a smattering of English (a path I started her on almost three years ago) and I’ve picked up less Chinese.  So it should prove to be an adventure and adventure R Us. I have no idea what she sees in me, but for some reason she stayed in touch – as much as one can with a huge language barrier.  From what I gather – and I’ve asked the question directly more than once – it’s the exotic foreigner thing combined with the impossibility for Chinese to either decipher or care much about a westerner’s age or looks.  Lucky for me.

Thank God for Google Translate and cut-and-paste.

I visited Chengdu in the summer of 2008 just before returning to the States and in the midst of my upending encounter that brought me back to China in 2009.  The big panda preserve is there and it’s a nice city.  At the time I was there, the effects of the May 12, 2008 earthquake were all over the area and many pandas had been evacuated to safer places.  A student of mine was there so I visited him.  He’s since gone back home to Fujian Province but the other Fujian girl relocated to Chengdu for reasons I have yet to discover.  Whatever happens, I’ll get back to the Panda Preserve and see spots there I missed last time.

See you.