Winter In Southern China

January 2001

My least favorite part of winter in the tropics is the mosquitoes. This is the wettest time of year and with so many canals and ponds around here mosquito breeding is off the charts. ?The mosquitoes here look more like our fruit flies, are completely relentless, and silent, so you only know they have bitten you when you start to itch. Thick swarms of these bugs call our stairwell home. Our stairwell is six stories tall. And yes, we live on the top floor. The good part, if we must find that, is that they do inspire the excellent workout of a quick dash up 6 flights of stairs! I close my eyes a bit and keep my mouth closed during the dash, as they are often so thick that you can feel them hitting your face. Then when we open the apartment door they flood in. We have gotten pretty good at tricking them into not coming in, but at least one or two usually outsmart us. Our current strategy is to put up a mosquito net just inside the door so we can come in, kill what mosquitoes that came in with us, and then voila! Maybe no bites at night. In Tim's old place he had a mosquito net over the bed. They still seemed to sometimes make it around the folds once in a while, but it was much better. Tim's main problem was the short beds here in China. His feet would hang over the end a bit thus touching the net, and would you believe those bugs bit the ENDS of his toes? In our current bedroom, the room is too small for the net, so I am going to hang a net curtain at the door.

How you deal with mosquitoes here has been amazing to watch. Another one of those mysteries of life. Most people just spray insecticide around like some folks spray room freshener. Room freshener, right...there's a concept, but anyway... needless to say, we don't do that. Tim found a very clever Chinese invention for killing bugs that looks like a badminton racket with wires stretched across the opening. When you press a button on the handle an electric current goes through its wires. You just slowly pass this 'racket' through the air over the bug and zap! I found this loud zap rather unsettling at first, but now, like Tim, I have come to feel a deep sense of satisfaction every time I hear it. We both utter a loud 'ahhhh' whenever it goes off. This sort of device is very necessary in fighting the war with these creatures because these little bugs are so tiny that you can just barely see them. You see them for a second and then they disappear... very frustrating. And just because they are small does not mean they have a small bite. Actually the bites themselves are small, but itch...wow! And would you believe that many of the Chinese don't have screens? And I am talking about folks in our development who have money. We had screens custom made for this place! So maybe you are having an icky, beyond the call of duty winter, but hey...have you gotten any mosquito bites?!