Chinese students sleep off heatwave in libraries and tents

As Chinese authorities issue warnings for extreme heat in the country’s eastern region, students are leaving their stuffy dormitories to camp in hallways and supermarkets.

Some have ditched their campuses altogether.

“We sometimes go out to stay in hotels for the air-conditioning,” a 20-year-old university student in the northeastern Changchun city, who declined to be named, tells the BBC. “There are always a few days in a year where it’s unbearably hot.”

Hotels have become popular among students seeking to avoid sweaty nights in their dormitories, which typically house four to eight people a room and do not have air conditioning.

But for many the move is a last resort. “Checking into a hotel is a huge expense for us students,” the student in Changchun says.

So on less desperate days, he perches a bowl of ice cubes in front of a small fan to cool down his dormitory room – what he calls “a homemade air-conditioner”. The invention has tided him over as the semester ended this week.

The sanfu season, known to be China’s “dog days”, usually starts in mid-July. But it arrived early this year, with temperatures in the eastern region soaring above 40C (104F) over the past week – and catching millions of residents off guard.

Concerns about the high temperatures spiralled after reports that a dormitory guard had died in his room at Qingdao University on Sunday – from what many believed to be heatstroke.

His cause of death was “under investigation”, said a statement released by the university on Monday. It said that he had been found in his room in an “abnormal condition” and pronounced dead when paramedics arrived at the scene.

Tributes quickly poured in for the man, known endearingly among students as the dormitory “uncle” who took care of stray cats on the campus.

“The kittens don’t know that Uncle has gone far away. After today it met a lot of people, but never heard Uncle’s voice again,” a Weibo user commented.

The incident has also cast a spotlight on the living conditions of the school’s staff and students. Also on Sunday, a student in the same university was sent to the hospital after suffering a heat stroke, Jimu News reported.

“The quality of a university does not lie in how many buildings it has, but rather how it treats the regular people who quietly support the school’s operation,” wrote another Weibo user.

In recent weeks China has been dealing with extreme weather – a worldwide phenomenon that experts have linked to climate change.

Chinese authorities issued flash flood warnings on Wednesday after a typhoon made landfall on China’s eastern coast. The storm, which killed two in Taiwan this week, and has moved across the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian.

On the other side of the country, floods swept away a bridge linking Nepal and China. At least nine died and more than a dozen- both Nepalese and Chinese nationals – remain missing.

Meanwhile, heatwaves in China have become hotter and longer.

In 2022, particularly gruelling heat caused more than 50,000 deaths, according to estimates by medical journal The Lancet. The following year saw a township in Xinjiang, northwestern China, logging 52.5C – the highest recorded temperature in China.

2024 was China’s warmest year on record, with July becoming the hottest month the country has seen since it started tracking temperatures in 1961.

“It feels like global warming has really affected our world,” says the university student in Changchun. “When I was young the summers in the northeast were really comfortable. But now the summers are getting hotter and hotter.”

This year, high temperatures again tested the limits of residents.

Last week, a video showed a man in Zhejiang province smashing the window of a train to let air in, after the train derailed and passengers were stuck for hours in the sweltering heat.

In the neighbouring Jiangxi province, an air-conditioned restaurant has become a hotspot for elderly folks to while away their afternoons without ordering any food – to the chagrin of restaurant staff, local media reported.

In the northeastern Jilin province, university students reportedly slept in tents lining an air-conditioned hallway.

And after reports emerged of students in Shandong province squatting in supermarkets and checking into nearby hotels to escape the heat, a university arranged for its students to sleep in the library, Hongxing News reported.

Several schools in Shandong province have announced plans to make their dormitories air-conditioned – an increasingly indispensable amenity.

Air-conditioning has accounted for more than a third of the demand on the power grid in eastern China, China’s energy authorities said, as nationwide electricity demand reached a record high in early July.

Qingdao University officials told local media on Monday that it also had plans to install air-conditioning in student dormitories over the summer break.

It is just what one high school student in Jinan city, 350km away, needed to hear.

The teenager, who had just completed his college entrance examinations, tells the BBC that he had been hesitant to go to Qingdao University – his top choice – because of its dormitories.

“Without air-conditioning, it’s too hot to survive,” he says.