Resident of Shapingba District, Chongqing, Mme Wang hasn’t touched his hot water tap for several weeks. When she wants to wash, she simply opens the cold water one, and hot water flows out of it, even almost boiling at first. When the air conditioning is not running in his accommodation, door handles, cupboards and stools are also “burning”. She testifies:
“Anything that can conduct heat is hot.”
At 9 p.m., even with the AC on, the window wall feels warm. Every time she goes to the bathroom [non climatisées]Mme Wang comes out swimming.
Mme Wang is a high school teacher and, in the middle of summer vacation, her rare daily outings are to go, under the shelter of an umbrella, to an air-conditioned gym. The rest of the time, she remains sealed off at home, where she takes advantage of the air conditioning, and she no longer ventures to go out in the evening. On August 19, his smartphone announced a temperature of 43°C, and no less than 35°C at midnight.
Temperature records broken
On August 22, Chongqing had already recorded fifteen days of temperatures above 40°C, without interruption. Since 1is July, they are clearly higher than the seasonal norm [qui sont déjà parmi les plus élevées du pays], and much lower rainfall. In the nine urban or rural districts of the huge municipality, local temperature records have been broken, and the cumulative rainfall is 60% lower than those recorded for many years over the same period. In August, there was a 90% rainfall deficit.
This is the first time that a resident of the town of Huolu [littéralement, “La Fournaise”] is forced to install an air conditioner, while fans have so far sufficed to be able to spend the summer, the town being located at more than 800 meters above sea level. As for Chen Min, who lives near the Blue River in the Yubei district, she draws the curtains every day to protect her apartment from the sun’s rays, because a friend of hers recently saw her French windows crack and form like a mosaic under the effect of the scorching heat.
Despite everything, some continue to work under the scorching sun. Thus, on August 22, at 3 p.m., police officer Lin Hailong monitors traffic. With no shade in the middle of the road for shelter, his uniform is soaked with sweat and the soles of his leather shoes peel off from the heat of the ground. He says :
“Right now I’m sweating so much that I just drink water without having to go to the toilet.”
And again, in this heat wave, the police are still lucky enough to be able to go into their vehicle to take advantage of the air conditioning. Street sweepers or construction workers are much more to be pitied.
Heatstroke is on the rise
It was around 6 p.m. on August 17 when Dai Hongxin, a 49-year-old worker, suddenly became dizzy and started vomiting while installing air conditioning in a lodging. He was the victim of heat stroke, but he did not want to go to the hospital. He contented himself with drinking a little grape juice and lying in the construction site dormitory for a whole day, before resuming work the next day.
He didn’t dare stop anymore, because a few years earlier, when his child had fallen from 6e floor and had been in a coma for five months, Mr. Dai lost his job because of his repeated absences to take care of him. As a security guard in a bank, he had to start working as a temporary worker to earn enough to pay his child’s medical expenses. The 300 yuan [44 euros] he touches per day are therefore vital.
So he hasn’t stopped working since the beginning of the summer, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., then from 1 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. when he installs air conditioners in new homes, but it’s still extremely hot from the scorching air coming in through the windows, and the fans aren’t much use. Mr. Dai therefore had a heat stroke despite his consumption of watermelon slices and Korean mint-licorice elixir. [censée combattre les effets de la chaleur] made available to workers by their site manager.
Outdoor workers are the most exposed to these kinds of problems. On August 23, a netizen filmed a scene where we can see a street sweeper also suffering from heatstroke, near the Dianjiang stadium. Slumped in a chair with his mouth open, he was struggling to breathe and his chest was heaving at a rapid rate. People had gathered around him, blowing fans a little air and handing him a glass of water, before he was finally taken to hospital.
Deputy chief physician of the emergency department at Chongqing Emergency Medical Center Zhao Jinchuan told us that his department had treated 48 cases of heat stroke since 1is July, with 26 patients in critical condition, a number significantly higher than in previous years.
Roses, mosquitoes, cicadas… Everything has disappeared
It’s not just men who have trouble withstanding the heat wave, animals and plants too. The roses that Mme Wang had bought withered within a day in an unair-conditioned room in her apartment, while the three potted plants on her balcony died of drought. This is also the case for most of the green spaces in his residence. Even the mosquitoes are on the decline in the face of the heat wave: in August, she did not have to use an electric diffuser to drive them away, unlike in other years.
Before, when Mme Chen woke up around 5 am, it was to the sound of birdsong, but now silence reigns, and even the cicadas are no longer heard. She forces herself to walk her dog three times a day, but lately he hasn’t wanted to go out:
“He’s afraid to put his paws on the ground and leaps forward.”
Every evening at 8 p.m., she goes to distribute food and water to a dozen stray cats in her residence, but the animals have lost their appetites and remain lying on the ground. Even an ordinarily very shy cat no longer scurries off when residents approach.
animals suffer
On the Geleshan hill, more than 800 stray dogs are also suffering the effects of the heat: panting, tongue hanging out, they lie down in the gutters, looking for a little coolness. This is where M.me Huang, 76, comes to feed them. She has been rescuing stray animals for more than twenty years, but this is the first time she has seen such heat. She comes to sprinkle the dogs with water three times a day to refresh them.
Dans le district de Yongchuan [littéralement, “Rivière éternelle”], a breeder goes every day in a van to villagers to buy them water. He thus makes four round trips and brings back 250 liters each time, which he uses to bring some freshness to his more than 10,000 chickens. Despite this, his beasts are so hot that they keep flapping their wings. Some have even died from it, and the breeder monitors the condition of the other birds 24 hours a day.
Nearly 1 million people lack drinking water
On August 15, at a press conference on the fight against drought due to high temperatures in 2022 in Chongqing, the municipality indicated that the heat wave which started on July 15 affected 881,000 people, including 269,000 who encounter difficulties in accessing drinking water, because 66 rivers are dry, as well as 25 reservoirs.
On August 22, a resident of the rural district of Jiangjin told us that there had been no running water in his village for three or four days and that he was reduced to boiling the water drawn from a well to consume it. He has pepper plants planted on more than a hectare, but after a month without rain, a large part of the shrubs have perished, and those which are not dead have very little developed buds. The farmer estimates that his pepper production could be reduced by a third this year.
Harvesting rice at 3 a.m.
On August 22, heat from a power outage woke Lai Yanling, a resident of rural Yilong prefecture in Sichuan province, very early. For several days, his village suffered daily power cuts, lasting at least four to five hours at a stretch. Finally, unable to sleep, she went to the fields to help her parents-in-law harvest the rice.
Because of the high daytime heat, the latter go to the rice fields at 3 a.m. every day to mow the rice, working until 8 a.m. and harvesting more than 500 kilos of paddy [riz non décortiqué] Everytime. As you can’t see well at night, they light up with a headlamp.
In the fields, flying insects and mosquitoes are numerous, and some get into the eyes. All the family members are wearing long-sleeved clothes, pants and socks, but despite this, they are itchy all over their bodies, and sweat is pouring from their foreheads into their eyes. They are impatiently awaiting the arrival of heavy rains, but these are slow.