Apartment in winter

After a night out, I get back to an apartment that has an unusual feature in China: wintertime heating that you can control yourself. Typically, apartments are heated as a public good, with radiators flipping on in November and turning off in March. We have a hot water heater in our apartment that we need to charge up to have heat, and right now it's out. It's about 15 degrees outside, and the wind is blowing through our sunporch in such a way that the sliding door separating it from the bedroom is clanking back and forth--cold and loud. Definitely makes one appreciate the smaller luxuries in life, and how a place like China has a knack for bringing you around to refocusing on them.