The heat is on (not)

Harbin, as I think I may have mentioned, is a place with an extreme climate. Like Montreal, whose latitude it more or less shares. Now you know how an extreme climate works, don’t you? In winter it’s very very cold indeed, 30° below zero, with snow and ice and such. In summer it’s really very hot - 30° and more above - tropical, almost - so hot you’d never believe the ice & snow were there six months ago if you hadn’t seen them with your own eyes. Got it.

But wait, aren’t we forgetting something? Cast your mind back to primary school. How many seasons are there? That’s right. So what does an extreme climate do in the season that comes between summer and winter? Changes from one to the other, that’s what. And as the needle on that thermometer has to travel such a long way in such a short time, it changes pretty damn fast – dropping about 5 degrees per week in fact – at night anyway. If you’re not familiar with the climate of Edinburgh then you’ll no doubt wonder why I find this even worthy of comment. But if you were used to living in a place where the weather’s more or less the same all year round apart from the odd warmish week in July and the odd coldish week in January, you would understand why the concept of a proper autumn is a revelation.

Come April or May, when the process is reversed, I shall doubtless be reporting with smug delight the joys of actually being able to step outside in light clothing and bask in spring sunshine, rather than the Scottish custom of gazing with confusion at the advancing calendar and wondering why there are no leaves on the trees and I’m still wearing a woolly hat. But for now I’m grumpily stomping about the house swathed in fluffy socks and huge jumpers which don’t normally see the light of day until Christmas-time, and occasionally sporting my dressing-gown as outer wear, and cursing whoever’s brilliant idea it was to have the heating in all the buildings here centrally controlled.

Yes, you read that correctly. We can’t switch on our own heating. We have to wait until The Powers That Be deem it cold enough. Surely this is taking communist communal whatnot to its most ridiculous and barbaric extreme. (Although I seem to remember they have the same system in France. I rest my case.)

I had been holding out with some optimism for October 1st to be the big switch-on day. After all, September 1st was considered an appropriate date for switching off the air conditioning in all the buildings, so I reckoned, a month of in-betweeny weather and then bam – October – it’s winter and the heating goes on. The shopping malls have been overheated for a week or more so I really got my hopes up.

But, alas, yesterday came and went and our floorboards - under which, I’m told, our elusive heating lies - remain resolutely cold to the touch, despite me testing them with a hopeful toe every couple of hours. Peter’s boss (who’s in the same boat in his building) said, ‘Oh, in Anshan it doesn’t come on until 1st November’. But Anshan’s several hundred miles south of here. They couldn’t be that cruel up here, could they? Could they?

The trouble is that, actually, if I’m truly honest now, it’s still vaguely warm outside during the day. Balmy enough for a mini plaguette of ladybirds, even. (What are the chances of that? The last time I saw that was in the Long Hot Summer of 1976, and believe me, that ain’t where we’re headed right now!) The Harbin locals, being used to those 30°C summer temps & all, think it’s cold enough to wear jackets but it’s really not. The other day we went for a walk and wrapped ourselves up in jumpers, coats, scarves and gloves, so convinced were we that if it was this cold indoors it must be freezing out. When we got outside it was 19°C and we had to take everything off again.

Unfortunately our flat’s south-facing side is entirely blocked in by high buildings and so we get no sun whatsoever. Add to this our double (or in some places quadruple) glazing – of which we’ll no doubt be exceptionally glad when winter comes in earnest – and you have one highly insulated ice box with no heat source. Even Peter, He Who Never Feels Cold, is wearing a fleece and his SHOES indoors.

I’m so depressed I nearly did my tax return.

But instead, I have decided that as Peter has to go to Shanghai on Sunday in order to start the next stage of the visa saga on Monday, little though I relish the prospect of leaving our home to live in a hotel again, I shall decamp there with him for a week or so. It’s 25-30°C there at the moment. (Ironically, Chinese government policy is that all public buildings south of the Yangtze River have no heating at all, so in a month’s time everyone in Shanghai will be sitting in the office with their overcoats on while we in Harbin will be walking on hot floors. I hope).

Then next week I shall do my best to convince everyone that I shouldn’t risk trying to get my visa in Shanghai and that it would be best for me to go back to the UK to get it as Peter did, and stay there for a couple of weeks. I know it’ll be cold and miserable there, but you have a brilliant thing called an On switch, and right now that sounds like heaven.