Drip, drip, drip

They turned on the heating in my building yesterday.

5th November?? That's ten days early. Yes, central heating in this country means "as decreed by the central government". November 15th-March 15th is the official duration of 'winter', and central heating shall be fired up for exactly this period, and not a day more or less.

That's pretty rough in places further north than here. In Harbin, for example, the temperature barely struggles above freezing even at noon from mid-October onwards, and the river is usually starting to freeze over well before the end of November. Even here in much more southerly Beijing, there's often a harsh nip in the air in October (my first year in this apartment, the temperature dropped by about 15°C on October 1st; but that was a bit of a freaky freeze). However, because the Beijing October - especially the last week or so of the month - tends to be so arse-freezing (and because this is, don't you know, the seat of government), the powers-that-be usually relent slightly, to show the people what caring and compassionate rulers they really are. If it's been a particularly sharp October, sometime around the end of the month the Committee For Deciding When The Heating Gets Switched On will meet in secret session for a few days, and then issue the necessary orders for the "15th November" to be rescheduled to the 5th or whatever.

So, is that's what's happened this year? Well, I hadn't heard any gossip about it (as I usually do). And this has been the mildest October I can remember. (Yes, yes, Leah has been complaining about the weather for most of the month, but..... well, she's just been living in California for too long. Her Viking ancestors would be shamed.) Sure, it's always one of the most blustery months of the year, so the windchill can be unpleasant. It also tends to be a bit misty occasionally, and damp air can settle a chill into your bones even if the temperature's not that low. But really - the sun has been shining most of the time; we haven't (quite) had a frost yet; and the last few days, it's even remained spookily warm at night, despite the clear skies. A quick check on Internet weather sites suggests that chilly old Harbin is about 10 degrees warmer than it was this time last year. It just hasn't been cold enough to justify turning the heating on yet.

So, what's up? I wonder if more and more building management companies for 'upscale' apartment blocks like mine are breaking free of the central government shackles, and choosing for themselves when to run the heating. Perhaps the '15th November rule' is becoming more of a guideline.

Even so, it's hard to see the compelling logic for firing up early. I mean, it's costing them money, right? And the residents here were all meekly expecting to have to endure another couple of weeks of heatinglessness.

Moreover, every year I've been here so far, there has been a sudden rise in temperature in early November - a run of blue sky days and pleasant sunshine for a week or two in the first half of the month. It might be overstating things a bit to call it "an Indian summer", but it's definitely pleasant. Well, pleasant outside, uncomfortably warm inside - because, of course, the central heating is now on, and it can't possibly be turned off again, or even adjusted, to accommodate unseasonally mild patches of weather.

The central-heating takes some time to make itself felt - a day or two for the water to make its way through the miles of piping around the building, another day or two (or three or four...) for the maintenance guys to chase out all the airlocks in the system, another day or two for the warmth to really assert itself over the ingrained chill of the building's fabric. So, I'm not expecting to start feeling cosy until the end of the week (I have the top floor apartment on the most exposed south-east corner of the building, overlooking a park, so I suffer a vicious wind-cooling effect: for the last month it has generally been way colder inside my apartment than out on the streets!).

For now, the most noticeable effect of The Big Switch-On is the noise. At first it was quite a restful, quite a musical noise - a sort of whispering, rustling, tinkling, as the water splashed into the empty pipes. I was slow to realise what it was, at first. But then I twigged, and enjoyed it on two levels; the reassurance that warmer days are not far off, and the pleasantness of the running water sounds. But, after a few hours, it had settled down into the relentless - and really very LOUD - tap, tap, tap that will keep up all winter. Fortunately, the main bedroom is the one room in the apartment where this phenomenon does not make itself heard. I have found it virtually impossible to sleep in the second bedroom during the winter (which does rather undermine the value of this place!). And the din in my study is already driving me crazy. I have tried in the past to try to get this 'fixed'. I will probably try again this year. Alas, it appears that there is nothing to be done. Something in the heating system drips, drips, drips, constantly for the next 4 months, and makes a dreadful bloody racket: thump-thump-thump, tick-tick-tick, tap-tap-tap. Aaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!!

At least I can console myself that I don't live in 'the South'. Yes, another of the more bizarre relics of the central planning era in China is the continuing insistence that half of the country does not have a winter. Or at least, not one that's severe enough to merit splurging valuable national resources on providing any heating. The dividing line is the Yangtze River. And the "freeze for the good of the country" diktat seems to embrace cities like Wuhan and Shanghai that are actually on the Yangtze, as well as those that are definitively south of it.

A lot of those places do in fact have a pretty chilly winter. Shanghai doesn't get that cold, but it is very damp. Friends in Shanghai tend to whinge continually through the winter months. Ha-haa..... yet another reason for preferring Beijing!