Nanning... Cold Nanning

Cold weather continued in Nanning, to my shock and dismay, as it lays well South of the Tropic of Cancer. Because these are places that are supposed to be hot year round, even luxury hotels (like the one I was staying in for $ 30) don’t have heating, the rooms are cold, the city itself seemed rather cold, everywhere but in shopping malls and the food market below my windows. Nanning is a city of 2.5 million people that seems to have raised overnight: all buildings don’t seem older than 20, the landscaped avenues have multiple aisles barren of urban texture, good for military parades, and all important looking bulidings (each grandly spaced at least one kilometer from another) have Chinese and red flags galore. Part of it is New Year’s (it is the augural color for the occasion, much more so than in the West), but it also seems PR’s for the ruling elite. The architecture and the planning are charmless, the scale crushing; the impression is of a city not planned with people in mind, just as the expression of a crass, glitzy, unevolved idea of grandeur. The only concentrations of people I found were, naturally, around the many shopping malls. It drizzled and rained the three days I stayed, with a high of 10 C (50 F). Stayed against my will, I should add: I tried to leave on New Year’s day, once the madness, subsided, but it was impossible: I went to the bus station and found it closed, I had to return to my room, after checking out of it. The only thing I wished for was to be somewhere hot, but this yearning may persist, as I am learning more about the Tonkin Gulf climate: I read the term "cold monsoon" which sent even more shivers down my spine, as apparently I am just on time to catch the tail end of it, it can appear until March...