The Great Heat of China

This past week I've felt mugged. I used to imagine China as a country uniformly cool from north to south, with weather as predictable and benign as one of pavlov's puppies. Unfortunately, on a hot day in Shanghai, reality rudely busted my rosy notions of normality and robbed me of my pretty picture.

For the first time in my life, I've seen young men swagger, as well as swelter on the streets without shirts on as though it was the most normal thing in the world. Those with a stronger sense of modesty but correspondingly weaker sense of style pulled up the front of their shirt and tied it into a knot, accentuating the not-so-gentle curves of their paunch. And in this way, many a young man went about working in the furnace that is Shanghai.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=324866&type=Metro
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200707/20070723/article_324427.htm

I figure that when even the 5000 year old Chinese lunar calendar can predict Great Heat Day (23 Aug), this amazing heat wave must have been in the weather workshop of Mother Nature for millenia. At this point, I must admit that for a 5000 year old project in the making, Great Heat Day is a little underwhelming.

I'd love to write more now, but I'm suffering from what I define as some sort of mild heat stroke and wouldn't get any further than sweating unnecessarily over my keyboard. I'll be back soon with a post and shots of my office and colleagues as soon as the weather cools enough so that the Shanghai skyline doesn't look like a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland from the window.