The winter is here!
I actually started to write this article over a month ago but then found some new articles I wanted to include and now had to start all over with it.
So this time I want to tell you something about the heating system in China. Here Northern Chinese Cities have got a central heating system; most of you probably know central heating system for a building or a building complex. Well here in China whole cities are attached to one heating system. Northern Cities are all those that are located north of the Huai He River (淮河). The area where the central heating is in place covers 17 Chinese provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions with around 700 million people living in it. So how does this work in practice ? Well here in Beijing central heating will be turned on at November the 15th .But from this year on it has been decided that they will turn it on if the city authorities declare that the winter has arrived. The Beijing authorities will concede that winter has come if the average temperature in Beijing is lower than 10 C for 5 consecutive days. So usually the heating will be turned on the 15th of November. This year it was actually turned on around the 2nd of November (and it was really needed as inside our building it was freezing cold the 10-15 days before the start of November and I usually was wearing my jacket at home) I also tried to spent as much time outside as possible as it was warmer outside than inside. Most of the time I went to a bakery to study which is about 200 meters away from the university where it is really hot inside (and their coffee and cakes are delicious and not expensive – if you want to go there it is called 贝果).
But now since the heating is turned on it is actually so hot inside that I can sit here in my t-shirt while outside it is around 0 degrees Celsius (I could probably be naked and still not be cold), I hope it will stay hot enough all winter as the temperatures are still dropping. That is one of the downsides of the system, you can’t turn the heating down yourself inside your room/apartment. I guess the building manager could turn it down a little bit but I am not sure about this. The second problem is that the heating runs 24/7 which is a big waste as I spend a lot of time outside of my room. The same counts for office buildings which are also heated during the night. Another improvement would be to build better isolated buildings (this would also help in the summer when the houses need to be cooled down).
Now I am not the only one having seen this problem and there is a discussion going on in China how to make this system more efficient, because the central heating system consumes about one quarter of the total energy china consumes per year and costs about 70 billion RMB (around 7,987 billion €) and an improvement of the system would reduce the costs and the greenhouse gas emissions.
As a final word I wish you a good winter, wear enough warm clothes when you go out and stay healthy!
