communist heat & schools

In Chinese apartments (and businesses I've recently discovered), you do not have any control over the heating unless you buy a stand alone unit. Most places are heated from the floor, and whoever controls the temperature (the government? hooray for Communism?) usually keeps it reasonably warm. The heated floors are pretty nice in theory, except that the Chinese don't really enjoy them, because they wear sandals in the house.

I was slow to follow this custom at first, but the more I'm here and see how much dirtier everything is than in the States, the more I don't even want my socks on the floor. Mops are used to clean floors, then hand railings. Maybe the rag that cleans the floor of a restaurant will clean a table afterwards. They probably won't use any kind of soap. Squat toilets, while great for someone that hovers over public toilets anyways, mean that you're standing in a lot more pee than in your average western bathroom. So your shoes are a lot grosser. So yeah, the sandals are clutch.

Turns out though, April first the heat in Songyuan was turned off for the year. And then it snowed. Twice. It's not too terribly cold inside my school because there are so many people there all the time. There are stand alone heaters as well, but I don't think we turn them on. Neither The Crack Den nor Crack Den 2.0 has a stand alone heater, which definitely means they're colder than I'd prefer, but not cold to the point that I wear my winter coat inside. Where you really notice is in restaurants that don't have stand alone units and the schools we're judging the contest at. The schools. Are. Freezing. It sucks. I can't imagine how the kids can focus.

Granted, I can't imagine how the kids can focus anyway. They go to school at 7am and leave at maybe 9pm. On my way to dinner tonight our taxi hit traffic because of parents picking their kids up outside of a high school at 9pm, no joke. Some of them have school on weekends too. And on top of all of the in school hours they still study like mad. I'd go crazy! I'm not sure how all of it works though; I have a few tutoring students that spend all day at my school Monday through Friday, with different tutors, and just learn English. They don't even go to their actual Chinese high schools. Seems like that shouldn't be quite legal. Truant much?

Even with all the in school hours, they do have sports teams, no clue when they have time to practice. They don't have any of the clubs or other extracurriculars that western schools do though.