My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chap 27: When the Heater Water Pipe burst in Winter

I was recently faced with some bathing facilities problems which made it hard for me to go about my day

without doing some planning of the timing to bathe and such. In addition we are currently in the ‘winter’

season in Singapore when rain is more and days are cooler in temperature. Which brought me back to

days when I was still residing in my hostel during my studies in China, Beijing.

I can still remember winter days in Beijing were somewhat romantic when you could wake up and find

yourself in white sonata. But what some people did not see was the problems that could occur during the

deep winters in Beijing. One of which was the heater water pipes.

Well, as a student I was staying in the hostel

provided by the school which were decades and

maybe centuries old. So one of the annual drama

we faced was the heater water pipes might

sometimes burst in the extreme change of

weather and temperature. The result? We would

have no hot water in winter for 3 days or

sometimes even a week.

Initially I was really in a culture shock but as the

years went by, I got used to this problem that

seemed to be an annual occurrence. So as

students, we tried all ways to get ourselves

cleaned without hot water available.

Going to the gyms bathrooms which might be 30 minutes bus

ride away, boiling hot water using the small kettles we had in

the hostels, or sometimes skipping a day of bathing were some

ideas we adopted to get through such episodes.

Which is the reason why when I currently had to face the problem of bathing facilities again in Singapore,

such problem is simply peanuts as compared to the past experiences. Because the resilience had already

been trained and ingrained.

Interesting?

Absolutely.

Further reading:

@dr_xiang_jun