This time of year feels like springtime here.  Well, the grayest,  most dreary, dead looking springtime you can imagine... but it's not springtime.  It's nearly December, 70 degrees and rains consistently for 5 days straight.  While I appreciate the warm weather (knowing that it's low 20's in Minnesota currently) and I certainly appreciate the fact that the rain will likely clear up the grossly polluted sky at least for a few days, I am annoyed that it is NEVER dry here.  Summer is blazing freaking hot but crazy humid every day.  But even winter I am told, even when it actually gets cold here, it's never dry. It's gonna be that wet type of cold that gets into your clothes and chills you to the bone.  Not that a Minnesota girl can't handle that.  I am 200% positive that it will be a piece of cake in comparison, but how are you supposed to dry your laundry during these wet winter months?  Theres no sunshine, it's cold, and rainy.  A dryer? Nope.  I don't know what it is about clothing dryers and ovens, the Chinese people seem to not really care.  Why dry your clothes in that when you can hang them outside? I'll give you two good reasons.

1.  They will ACTUALLY dry.  I have had a pair of cotton pajama pants hanging to dry out on my porch for SIX days and it's still damp.  If they sit out there any longer they are going to start growing mold.

2.  They won't soak up all the "smells".  There are some things about China that I really enjoy, the smell of the air is usually not one of those things.  In the early fall weeks the Osmanthus trees were in bloom and it smelled like honey and pancakes across the region. It was spectacular, the best smelling tree ever.  But those blooms lasted about 3 weeks. Before and after that, my clothes tend to soak up the smell of pollution in the air, and burning garbage. 

Right, about the burning garbage....It's a problem.  I'm pretty sure that a really good chunk of the air quality problem in Hengdian is not necessarily from factories. Sure, they do their part...but it's common practice in most parts of China to take your garbage outside, make a nice pile on the side of the road and set it ablaze.  At first I thought it was all organic material, but after a closer look I discovered they are burning all sorts of things.  A lot of materials like plastic and metal gets picked over and sold to companies/ families for re-use but what doesn't get picked out...gets burned.  And it stinks, and leaves a grey cloud over the mountains, and leaves the scent of garbage and ash in my knickers as they hang out to dry. 

Point is, I'll be back in MN in precisely three days. I am super excited to pull dry, hot, awesome smelling clothes out of a dryer and roll around in it a little bit.

 Update: As a solution to this problem, Tim and I have turned our second bedroom into a huge dryer. We pulled the pole from our porch and have it hanging off of two tripods, haha.  Then turn heater up as high as it will go in that room, which is 32 C.  Not too bad.  It's like a sauna in there with all the hot wet laundry, but it works way better than hanging outside, and without all the smoggy smells!