Summertime brings heat and heat brings millions of Chinese people to look for alternatives to cooling the body. I have alluded to this trend before by speaking about the Beijing TaxiDriver Coolness Technique of rolling up one leg of the trousers to give differential heat to each leg (exactly how a modern refridgerator works, by the way) but a recent trip to a local swimming pool reminded me of these ’adaptations with Chinese Characteristics’ so I thought I would share them with you as example of ’Chinese coolness’.

1) Belly RollUp - walk around any Chinese city or village after 4 PM and you will find at least 40% of the local males wandering around with shirt rolled up to nipple-line and proud belly protruding below. So arresting is this sight that dogs run away, people faint and children scream...but it continues unabated.

2) Feet Fallout
Go to any office in China and you will detect a slightly pungent odour at desk level - this is the nylon sock smell of Chinese men’s feet! Invariably, when buying shoes in China, the males decide to buy one shoe 3 sizes bigger than the other which means one foot invariably falls out of one shoe and not the other when sitting in their cubicles playing QQ! The combination of fungus and nylon socks creates the final product...but most people believe it is a ’natural smell’ so it must be good for you! Combined with BaiJiu Body Odour and Hot Pot Halitosis and you get a great combination all summer long!

3) Fan FlipFlop
In the days of old, pretty Chinese ladies would collect a dainty silk and camphorwood fan and gently brush air toward their features. These days, the silk is now gaudy advertising for body reconstruction surgery on cheap cardboard and the people beat the air at 150 beats a minute and attacking everyone in sight with constant flapping!

4) E-Bike exercises
Young men in China seem to have been able to perfect the art of lying across a bicycle or e bike at the most awkward looking angles in efforts to cool their stomachs, lower backs and feet!

The bikes, parked in the shade of a tree, or the cooling breeze from a lake or river have a human blanket delicately draped and balanced over them for most of the afternoon! Don´t bother seeing the Shanghai Acrobats - just head to the nearest park.

5)Scalding Stomach
Hot tea, poured into the body, can heat the body core so quickly that the resulting rush of blood to the external body parts makes the feeling of cooling - repeat every 20 minutes!

6) Chilli Conditioner - the locals of ChengDu, arguably one of the melting pots of China in the summer have the same solution, make ones interior body temperature 15 degrees hotter than exterior this time eating copious amounts of chillies - better still, the locals of Chongqing load up on Chillis and Mace at every meal.

7) Human Soup
Just visit one of the public swimming facilities once the thermometer reaches 35 degrees and you will see the greatest grubby phenomenon possible - the largest number of people jammed into the smallest space, simmering in their own juices - not a nice image I know, but if you think a nice dip in the pool will be a cooling and refreshing experience...think again!

Good luck with the heat!