Chapter 10 -- You Know It's Cold When...

After a month of cold weather, this thought seems to always be turning around in my head. After Christmas, the weather warmed up to about 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) for a week. It is now back again to 2-4 degrees during the day, and it is wet and breezy. It is a strange kind of weather, because it feels warmer when you get up than in the middle of the afternoon. Maybe it's just that you get progressively colder as the day goes by.

As the school is unheated, teaching is always the challenge. How the children survive, I don't know. The coldest room is the first-grade class. The teacher always has the windows open, so not only do you have the cold, but also the wind. The desk rows are rotated each week, so for several weeks I have had the privilege of sitting under or in direct line with the open windows at 8:00 in the morning. The children never take their hats of coats off, and often wear special gloves with the fingertips cut out so they can still write with gloves on. Their little faces are just as cheerful as always, though some have chill blains on the lips and hands. Everyone has a continuous hunched posture as you try to hold the heat into yourself.

I am not complaining. I have a house that has a built-in electric heater in one room. (The air conditioner does double duty.) Most people have only the charcoal burners that they place in the middle of the room or under the table at their feet. Some have a wooden box with one side open and covered with slats. In the box is a small heat lamp. They place their feet on the slats so that the lamp warms their feet. Some of the workers here didn't even have a solid wall between them and the cold. The building they were in was brick, but a lot of the wall was not solid, consisting instead of big open X's made of bricks. The wind blew right through. There were about a dozen men living in the building until the construction was over. At that point the building was dismantled, brick by brick, and hauled off. Yesterday the two men left guarding the remaining construction supplies were outside their living quarters, which now consist of walls of tarp, with a temporary roof of metal sheeting. They had a fire going in the middle with their quilt rolled up on the slab of wood that was the bed. They were chatting away fixing breakfast and singing to themselves. I guess this is what the Chinese mean by "being strong." Often children come into our house with wet feet and only a thin pair of nylon socks on. They don't seem to notice. We have been buying warm socks for the children and an occasional jacket or two, as well as long underwear. I think people think it strange when we give them these things, but none have refused them.

Enough about the weather, almost. Here are some jokes we have dreamed up to keep our sense of humor active.

You know it cold when:

• You lose count of how many layers your daughter has on.
• The favorite pastime is to compare the number of layers worn.
• The children all look and feel like Pillsbury Doughboys.
• Your daughter needs help going to the bathroom because she can't pull down all the leggings in time.
• It takes an extra 10 minutes to get dressed in the morning.
• It's easier to take off your clothes 4 layers at a time, and they stand up on their own.
• Your clothes add 20 pounds and several inches to your frame.
• You realize that the spasms in your shoulders are really shivers.
• You see your breath at bedtime, first thing in the morning, in the bathroom, etc.
• Your fingers are shaking so much that you keep typing extra letters.
• You can't feel whether you have pressed the keys or not.
• You forget what toes feel like.
• You are wearing slippers with two felt insoles, and sheepskin linings, and your feet are numb for breakfast until bed.
• When cooking, the steam from the veggies is so thick you can't see the wok.
• The steam from the sink full of dishwater obscures vision of the dishes.
• Your blankets weigh more than you do.
• Your skin color can only be described as purple.
• You have a wardrobe full of clothes, but wear so many at a time that you have only three outfits.
• It takes a week to hang-dry the wash.
• The toothpaste won't squeeze out of the tube.
• You buy new shampoo, turn it upside down and nothing comes out.
• The peanut oil has congealed and the honey is rock-hard.

That's more than enough for now. We do have hot water, and one room has an air conditioner that will blow warm air if you can figure out the controls, which are all in Chinese chararacters. I'm sure in the summer we will have a whole list of "You know it's hot when..."

We have definitely decided to head south for Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Years. It is a combination of New Years, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Most people travel to be with their families. The standard procedure, as we understand it, is to visit all the home of your relatives and in-laws. A live chicken is always a welcome gift. We'll be traveling on the train at the same time as everyone else in China. Guangzhou, Maoming, and Hong Kong should be warm. Eternal optimists that we are, we are packing our swim gear.