I think my least favorite weather condition is rain. By far. Not even close. (unless, does humidity count? I kind of clump them together. I just hate wetness). Anyway, the only reason why it’s kind of tolerable when I’m at school is because I have rain boots and a huge 68” diameter umbrella. This combo keeps me pretty dry, except for when there’s huge wind.
In Beijing, I have neither. I have no rainboots and just like the people, clothes, portions, etc, everything in Beijing is smaller. The umbrella barely covers my backpack, but no worries, my backpack comes with a rainfly! I really wouldn’t have a problem with the rain here except for the fact that the sewer system sucks (I seriously never thought I’d say something like, I really appreciate the amazing sewer/draining system in the US and really miss it) and the roads/sidewalks are still insanely dirty. Like literally, there is dirt everywhere.
Water + dirt = nasty nasty mud. Rain + Beijing = nasty mud ponds.
(potential business opportunity? Put a tub in Beijing and wait for it to rain…voila! Free dirt, free water, all profit mud bath! (minus the cost of the tub))
The rain bothers me the most on the way home from work, on my walk to the subway. Even if it’s not raining on my walk to the subway, if it’s rained a lot during the day (or the day before), these are your own options for getting up/down the stairs
to the subway:
To get to the subway from work...
and the other side of the stairs, to catch the bus to work...
When it comes to the weather, home wins easily. AND this isn’t even considering the horrible pollution here…I’ve been here for almost 2 months, and I think I’ve seen at most 6 days of blue sky (although this is a major improvement from the 1 per 3 weeks avg from every other trip here and the past two days have been GORGEOUS. like on the level of Chapel Hill in Sept before global warming/San Fran in Sept). The sky is cloudy (or is it hazy? I really can’t tell.) all the time and impossible to tell by looking at the sky if it’s going to rain or not. I guess this is why the meteorologists here are absolutely horrible. They’re worse than the meteorologists back home at predicting when it’s going to snow…predictions from the Beijing meteorologists: 1. “there’s going to be a huggee thunderstorm tonight and it’s going to pour tomorrow too”…or 2. “there will be rain all weekend”. I’ve been better at predicting if it’s gonna rain for not.
1. At 8 pm that night, there was a news flash (a bar thing that went across the TV screen), “there will be no storm tonight”…in fact It didn’t even rain.
2. I think there were a few droplets of water that lasted maybe 10 min on Sunday night. -_-.
What I don’t understand is why my aunt and uncle still make sure to watch the weather report every night.
At least someone with good heart has put the bricks for you and other to walk over not in the puddle. In US, thing like this will be fixed by city gov with taxpayer money. Maybe until one day Chinese gov is willing to spend the money to improve these condition, China will not be old China.
ReplyDeletehello dear madam,
ReplyDeletei would like to point out that in chapel hill the weather usually has the courtesy to rain at night.
thank you for your attention.
best,
louisa