Ok, so my sabbatical plan is to head to Harbin at the end of January, arriving just before the tail end (I hope) of the really cold weather. I think - I fear - that I'm going to miss the coldest part of the winter, but I'm hoping for a late-season cold snap, at least. (One of the main points of this exercise is to test my assumption that I would like really cold weather if exposed to it for a period of time. I persist in thinking it's true, but I've never experienced "really cold weather.") Anyway, even if the coldest is over, I can expect daytime temperatures in the minus 10 to minus 20 Celsius range. That's plenty cold for someone who's been spending her winters cradled in the middle of the Mitten. (Think about it: winters in Duluth, Chicago, Buffalo, Houghton-Hancock . . . Lansing.)

Anyway, I'm having a hugely difficult time thinking about how to dress, and therefore what to pack. If I were going somewhere in North America (I imagine), the task would be easy: half a dozen turtlenecks, a warm-ish sweater, a Really Warm Sweater, down vest, down jacket, long down coat, hats, mittens, scarves, etc. I own that stuff, and I could pack it in my sleep.

But China . . . well, packing for China (especially Harbin) is different. For one thing, the weather is different than here, and a lot different than I expected. Before I went that first summer, I remember a friend consulting a map and then telling me, "Whoa, the climate will be like Alaska!" Actually, no, as it turned out, to my great disappointment. For one thing, it got hotter in the summer there than it gets in Lansing, and for another, the heat just feels different. I realized then that temperature and latitude really don't tell you much about how a place will feel at all.

The first big difference I noticed in Harbin came partly because of the temperature, and partly because very few places have air conditioning (and few of those have central air). We teach in classrooms with no air conditioning and in which it's difficult to get cross-ventilation. I'd counted on wearing my usual summer wardrobe (shorts, maybe a skirt or two, with polo shirts or tank tops or t-shirts) - but I miscalculated the degree to which my usual summer wardrobe depends on my spending a lot of time feeling cool. Sweating in my North American life is a localized, infrequent occurence. I plan for it. I have a specialized wardrobe for many activities (like biking), and I can plan to change clothes several times a day.

In China, though, let me just say that the situation is different. Clothes that I wear comfortably at home look like hell on me when I'm there. I've developed a "China wardrobe" of loose-flowing, long skirts with loose silk tops (that provide a surprising amount of wicking and airflow), long waistless dresses, and my usual shorts with "technical" (read= some kind of polyester) shirts that also wick and hide (and that can be surprisingly fashionable, I kid you not).

I'm expecting the same kinds of disruptions in my winter wardrobe, too. For one thing, it's going to be frick-frackin' cold outside. I can't imagine the garments that will keep my hands warm at 30 below; I certainly don't own them.

And as for inside . . . well, here's where it gets really interesting. All I know about the heat in Harbin is:

* it's predominantly (if not all) radiant hot-water heat.
* there are many, many things I don't know about the heat in Harbin, including how it is metered and how people pay. I've gotten many different answers when I've asked about this. (The whole idea of getting wildly different answers to what seems to be a straightforward question really fascinates me, and deserves a post in and of itself. But here's the short version: The answers are so different because they don't understand the question, usually because they do things Really Differently with respect to that question and they have no frame of reference for our way - or me for theirs.)
* but here's one thing I think I know, about radiators. You may purchase a certain number of radiators for your home (apartment) based on the square footage of the house. The size of the radiators is dependent on the size of the rooms. (I swear someone also told me that in university-sponsored housing, full professors got bigger radiators than associate or assistant professors, but don't quote me on that. That's the sort of thing university professors across the globe would find plausible, so I could be completely misremembering . . . )
* It doesn't seem uncommon for people not to have a separate thermostat for their own apartment. I'm not exactly sure why. I do know that the young university professors of my acquaintance often share one or two-room apartments with another young professor, so they live in what are, by our standards, dorm rooms . . . which don't have thermostats, either, do they? So my perceptions might be skewed by the fact that I hang out with a lot of young university professors . . .
* I know that I can't figure out how people pay for heat. I've heard that a building is charged for total usage, which is then prorated according to the square footage (or square whatever the hell they use) of the individual apartment. I think that new apartments might provide individual metering, but I'm not clear about that. One interesting thing is that the old buildings simply don't have a way to measure or regulate heat flow to individual units, and it's costly to retrofit them. (So many of what look to me like China's quirks come down to the simple fact that it's costly to provide infrastructure to 1.3 billion people.)

In practical terms, all of that adds up to: I don't know how cold it will be in the rooms in the winter, so I don't know what to pack. I was there in March, and again in late September, and I wasn't cold - wasn't even chilly - in any interior space. I'm thinking that a big, thick woolly sweater would be totally useless there. You don't need it inside, and outside - well, does anyone really play outside in 30 below zero weather? (If anyone does, I'll find them. I have hope; I saw some speedskating rinks.)

And in more esoteric terms: I have only the sketchiest of ideas about how my friends in Harbin solve the puzzle of how to stay warm in the winter . . . and I just find it fascinating that the puzzle involves local culture on so many levels.