Now after all that, you might ask why I'm still so cold. Well, the government controls the heat. This usually isn't so bad since the school installed some extra doors in the kitchen and the balcony, but this year something is different. When the radiators first turned on it was so hot in our apartment, probably about 80 degrees. I don't know what happened but every week, it gets colder and colder in here. I don't know if someone complained that it was too warm or what, but I swear it's colder than two weeks ago in the apartment. Oh and the heat is only turned on a few hours a day. I think it turns on at about 6 am for a few hours and again at about 5 pm for a few hours. On really cold days, it's on longer. Today it's been on for about 5 hours so far this evening, but it is by no means warm.
This is the same at work. In the past, the school where I work didn't pay the outrageous fee to have the radiators turned on at the school during the winter. I thought that made quite a bit of sense since most of our classes are during the weekend and during the day (mostly when the radiators aren't turned on anyway). It worked out fairly well as every classroom and office had an electric heater in it that was used when needed. This year, however, the school has opted to pay for the radiators. So when I arrive at 7:30 am, my office is nice and toasty, but towards noon it gets quite chilly. The classrooms are a different story. Those might be warm if the doors and windows were kept closed (the students feel the need to wear 5 layers and a coat then complain about being too warm so they open the windows during break time when the teachers aren't in the room). The school might be warm if the front doors were kept closed too. One terrible habit that the Chinese have is that they keep doors open constantly. Even I have come to the point that if I see that the front door to a store isn't open then I won't even try to go in. Now, this could all be solved if we could use the heaters that we have used in the past. However, they have all been unplugged and the socket is located in the ceiling. This is inaccessible without a ladder (which is kept locked up). Even if one were able to climb up and plug in the heater, you need a remote to operate it. Those are kept locked up at the front desk. One has to ask a receptionist for it. The worst part is that I have a class in a classroom that is located in the center of the school between two hallways; radiators only run along exterior walls. No heat whatsoever in that classroom.
Notice all the coats and layer upon layer of clothes underneath. And I guarantee they are all wearing at least 2 layers of long underwear.
I do have it better than a lot of people. I have heard that it is illegal to occupy a home that hasn't paid the radiator fee, but some still do it. Their apartments have to be freezing cold. Even some offices and other places of work don't use heat. Howie had a job in the past like that. He wore his coat and hat all day while sitting at a computer working.
It's the same in the summer. While it doesn't get too hot here in the summer most days, the humidity is at least 90% and we do hit 100 degrees for a about a week or so. There is a law that if the temperature is more than 40 degrees Celsius then people don't have to go to work. Magically, it never gets above 39 degrees.
Last summer our school had to relocate because the original building was being resurfaced. We moved to a large building across the street where we occupied about half the space as our original school. At first, no air conditioners were installed except the large stand alone unit that went into the lobby. Eventually, management realized that our classrooms were going to get really hot with up to 20 kids in each tiny classroom and installed one wall unit in each classroom. This was great until the really hot days came (sweating at 9:00 am is not my favorite thing). The classrooms were so close together and only separated by one thin sheet of dry wall. There was one window in each classroom. Because the classrooms were so close together, we had to keep the doors closed so as not to interrupt each others classes. This caused another problem, no circulation. No breeze will come through an open window if it has nowhere to go. Because of this, we turned on the air conditioning units. Great idea until we realized one very hot morning that every light and A/C unit was connected to the same circuit breaker. Every classroom went dark and got really hot every time we tried to turn on the A/C. Teachers were constantly taking turns to get shocked by the breaker box in order to have light again. I eventually gave up on using the A/C and just opened my door. Others did this as well and we were pretty much yelling over each other in order to "teach".
Now, this is not horrible when compared to the working conditions of others in this country. I don't know many people who are blue collar workers so I don't know much about this. However, my father-in-law recently retired from butchering pigs but became a bit stir crazy just staying at home every day. Because of this he decided to take seasonal jobs in different cities. At his last position, he was a sort of on-site accountant for a construction company. His job was to wake up at about 4:00 am every morning and wait for material delivery. He then had to go through every crate or box to make sure that everything was in order. While he was not doing much manual labor like his coworkers were, he was still housed with them. As I mentioned in a previous post, most laborers who work on sites like these are unskilled workers from rural areas. Therefore, the workers live together on site. No matter the season, the first thing the workers do when they arrive is to build their living quarters. These are small one story buildings made of what looks to me like corrugated steel. The walls are white and the roofs are blue. Inside there are bunk beds and maybe a couple of small tables or chairs to play cards and have meals. It is a shelter, and that is all. Most of the ones that I've seen (only from the outside, I've never been in one) have a couple of bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. I have never seen a place where a bathroom might be since there are windows all around the building (unless there is a window in the bathroom, but I always just see bunk beds in front of every window). I'm assuming they use a sort of outhouse but most wouldn't consider this so bad since most of the laborers use outhouses at their own houses.
Anyway, some of these men work 12 hours a day with little or no safety equipment. The city is building a subway here and there is a construction site right next to our school. The subway has collapsed numerous times so far. It's scheduled to open in two years, but I don't see that happening. When it does open, I think I'll wait a while to use it since it just keeps collapsing. I'm not sure if anyone has been trapped in the tunnels, but that wouldn't be reported since most of the fall-ins aren't reported anyway.
The fruit stands near my home are funny to see in the winter. In the past, the vendors would just suffer the cold while wearing what looked like coats made out of comforters. This year they all banded together and built little huts made of spare wood and plastic sheets. They also jimmied together a small wood stove of sorts. On one end of their hut, they have a place to burn whatever it is they are using which feeds into a metal pipe. The pipe is run across the top of the hut to a hole in the opposite wall. It can get nearly comfortable in the fruit huts now.
The mechanics shop that we bring our car to charges extra in the winter to wash a car. This is because they have to heat the water so it doesn't freeze while hand washing the car. (It costs about $5 to get your car washed by hand here.) I feel sorry for the guy that works there. The garage doors are always wide open and he's constantly getting splashed by water.
Howie's best friend, Allan, works in the law department of some huge corporation. He arrives at work at about 7:00 am and usually doesn't leave until 10:00. He works 7 days a week usually. Occasionally, he'll have a Sunday off. He spent numerous nights sleeping in his office because there just wasn't enough time to go home, sleep, and come back. He makes roughly $600 a month.
One job that I would never want is to be a street sweeper. One reason that littering is so common here is because there are people who walk around on every street and sweep up everything (also there aren't many trashcans on the streets). The past few weeks, one of the jobs that these people have had is to wash the dividers in the middle of the streets. Only once have I seen a road block to make drivers pull into a different lane so as to avoid hitting those who are washing the barricades in the middle of the road.
There are many times that I've had to walk under a man welding a sign to the front of a store. No welding visor or gloves on a rickety ladder in the middle of a busy sidewalk. I watched a man using a skill saw (the rotary power saw) the other day. He placed the wood to be cut on two saw horses. Lifted one of his legs to hold the wood in place then cut the wood towards himself! I kept waiting for him to hit a knot in the wood or something and cut into his leg. He must have had a lot of practice doing this because he was fine when he was done.
According to people I've talked to, China has seen huge improvements on worker safety and the like. And for the most part, it's not the government who is ignoring this problem, but the employers. There are ways of getting around the laws (like guanxi) and there are other employers who just don't care.
Here is a photo I took at a construction site for a house that Howie and I were thinking of buying. We just walked right in, no security, no one asked us to leave, and many of the employees were not wearing hard hats.
