If you are selling electric fans in Xining today you are a very happy person!

I paid my $7.00 for a small fan to put in the bedroom and believe me I wasn’t the only buyer! 

Now being from Florida the idea of Xining being in the midst of a heatwave is pretty laughable.  I mean, c’mon, most of the folks around here haven’t stopped wearing light jackets and long pants…nor will they stop wearing these articles of clothing before the frigid temperatures return.  I was in Beijing and Shanghai last week and those areas of the country were so muggy and humid you really didn’t want to venture out too far past the nearest air conditioner.

BUT many things in life are relative, and I suppose it would be hard to miss the obvious fact that it’s HOTTER than normal here.  Yahoo! Weather reports the temperature today is at 83 degrees Fahrenheit.  But the "feels like" indicator (I am always so curious how they come up with these very "scientific" sounding terms??) says that the temperature feels like 87 degrees.

What’s even more astounding is that the humidity is at like 42%!  It’s usually twice that amount in Fort Myers, Florida, where I grew up, but Xining is a desert plateau…where in the world is all that humidity coming from?  Global warming, I imagine.  I know 42% doesn’t seem like much, but when you’re used to your lips cracking like sandpaper as soon as you step out your front door 42% humidity "feels like" you are swimming.  Some of the folks who have lived here a few years were marveling at how humid it is.  They couldn’t remember it ever being this hot and sticky.

Yeah, well, before we came here these same folks (who seem so surprised by the heatwave) also told us that there were no mosquitoes in Xining.  Well, I’ve got some news for them.  At 6 a.m. this morning, I woke up for two reasons:

1. I was sweating like I had contracted malaria, and
2. I might have actually contracted malaria because a mosquito had been feasting on my back for the last hour.  I could still hear the blasted thing buzzing around my ears!*

So, yes, there are mosquitoes here and yes, it does get uncomfortably hot (even humid) here in the summer.  Just thought I would clear that confusion up.  And, no, the city doesn’t really offer cold drinks in most of its convenience stores…

Primitive accommodations, folks.  Primitive.  It’s like the Dark Ages.

*note: I’ve had a long standing theory that mosquitoes are nothing more than a result of the Fall.  What good do they serve?  Someone enlighten me?  Perhaps, they decrease surplus populations of certain land mammals–but there has to be a better way to do this?  A result of the Fall, I say!  Nasty little buggers.