Studying in China in the 80s

[Scoobyqueen]

I just spoke to someone who studied in China in 1981.

[xianhua]

I guess things have changed a lot since then.

Maybe for some. Last year we visited the dormitory of the High School where my wife's nephew studies in Hubei. The conditions were quite similar to those you described except there's no heating in the evenings.

[liuzhou]

Many, many Chinese students still study under similar conditions.

Heating? What's that?

[JenniferW]

I taught in China from 2000 to 2006, in smaller places off the beaten track - all in colleges.

The student dormitories, like the classrooms, were all concrete floors, and broken glass in the windows was common, meaning icy winds whistling through in the winter. We only had heating in the Gansu college I worked in - dormitories and teaching buildings - and although in Anhui I worked south of the Cháng Jiāng, our winters included short spells of snow and longer spells of icy winds whistling down from the eastern plain from Siberia.

Hot water? In all those colleges students did the twice-a-day hot water collection, with their two big thermos flasks. There were shower blocks with hot water, but using those was not cheap, and for most students I knew well enough to know about their personal habits, a hot shower was a weekly treat. In Yunnan I lived in a teachers flat with a solar heated hot water supply, which meant there were weeks in the winter where we had no hot water for showering at all.

There must be lots of colleges around China where these conditions are still the norm.

[Xiwang]

. . . floors were washed by blocking the toilet and letting the water run over the floor.

I'm going to start trying this in my apartment.