It stems from a decision Mao made more than 50 years ago. First, people expect the state to be responsible for heating, which is weird to us but follows the soviet model. So the state decided to provide central heating to people in the north but not in the south.

Now you could provide your own heat, but the majority of Chinese live in apartment blocks that are poorly insulated between units. So to heat your home you have to heat all of your neighbors also, which isn’t going to happen. It works fine in northern China because they just pump hit water through the whole building. So people are left with local heating options, eg the kokatsu.

So my wife and her family own a couple of apartments in hunan that we’ve thought about renovating for heat. No one local really knows how to do it because it isn’t done. Coupled with the fact that walls in China are concrete slabs, not wooden posts with room for insulation in the middle, so you have to add something on top of the walls and maybe do heating from the floors. Anyways, it is expensive.

And it’s not just your home, but where you work. The last time I went to the HSR station in my wife’s hometown, the girls selling snacks at the station were really bundled up and if you weren’t wearing gloves your hands with hurt...inside the brand new train station.

Indoor heating is a requirement in much of the states, even in LA (you can skimp on AC, but you can’t rent or sell a unit without heat), and building codes have improved a lot over the years so it’s unlikely you’ll freeze your butt off in something built within the last 30 years.

Central heating is lacking in southern China in all but single family homes and high end apartment buildings for sure, but the air conditioner is considered one of the essential household appliances, alongside the refrigerator, television (this one might be on the decline?), etc.

> Now you could provide your own heat, but the majority of Chinese live in apartment blocks that are poorly insulated between units. So to heat your home you have to heat all of your neighbors also, which isn’t going to happen.

Apartments I lived in and visited all have AC (usually more than one unit for moderately sized ones) and I’m pretty sure I never benefited from neighbors’ AC at all, nor did mine benefit them. Insulation may be bad but not that bad. If you were planning in-floor hearting then yeah, you’re probably gonna provide for the household living downstairs too.

> Workplace & HSR station

Ones I’ve been to (Beijing, Shanghai, numerous ones between Shanghai and Nanjing including ones at small towns, etc.) all have indoor AC. Haven’t been to Changsha but kind of hard to imagine it lagging behind too much. Every single office building I’ve been in, too, but I suppose I’ve hardly ever been in a really crappy one.

> Indoor heating is a requirement in much of the states, even in LA (you can skimp on AC, but you can’t rent or sell a unit without heat), and building codes have improved a lot over the years so it’s unlikely you’ll freeze your butt off in something built within the last 30 years.

Not talking about freezing my butt off apparently, just uncomfortably cool to the point of having to wrap myself up even at home. Many houses aren’t built within the last 30 years so there’s that.

A concrete slab built without insulation is going to be difficult to insulate after the fact, you just can’t foam it up because there is nowhere for the foam to go. You have to maybe build a false wall and lose some floor space, or use paneling. Anyways, it is complicated.

Zhejiang and jiangsu are China’s richest provinces, and often lack the problems of the rest of south China. Jiangsu is actually north of the Yangtze so they they get heat in the cities anyways, like much poorer Anhui next door. Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and I guess fujian is where the no heat in the south starts to hurt. Guangxi and guangdong also, though winter weather isn’t as bad, but touring Guilin I the winter was also a bit uncomfortable, only the five star hotels provided real heating.

Yes, I was using the phrase air conditioner (don’t think I’ve seen a unit in China without heat function) for lack of a better one, but the meaning was hopefully clear given the context.

The AC units mostly cost between 1-3k yuan (just looked up the current prices) so they’re affordable to pretty much all (urban) households, even in the poorer regions...

AFAICR commonly seen AC units can usually heat up to something like 25-28 degrees Celsius (except ones that have been sucking up a lot of dust and haven’t got a proper cleaning in a while, in which case they’d be less effective) so they’re okay.

Another thing: Yangtze actually runs through Jiangsu, with the wealth concentrated mostly in the south. I’m not sure where they start to have central heating — the cities bordering Shandong probably do, but Nanjing (sitting on top of Yangtze) and southern cities don’t have it, that I’m sure about.