Though the looking glass, snarkily

People have probably heard me tell this little factoid before but it bears retelling, not just to emphasize just how unbelievably hot the summer in Beijing is but also to show that, as difficult as it may be to believe for Westerners, the structure of truth is actually different in China than what is accepted in Los Angeles or Kiel.

In Mao's little red book, there is a rule that supposedly states that when the temperature exceeds 40 degrees C (~ 104 F) that all workers get the day off. (I say supposedly because while I have a copy of the little red book, I haven't been able to actually find this quote. Which is pretty understandable since Mao's discourse on the structure of capital, socialism and the revolution is so filled with poorly written (translated?) cliches that it is virtually catatonia inducing.) One might think that since it often gets to 40 degrees in Beijing and more commonly in the south that this rule would be less than fully applied, maybe only when the temperature gets to 42 or so. But in fact the way it works here is that the temperature is just never reported as more than 39 degrees. On the news, in the papers, China has a magically maximum temperature, which hasn't been exceeded in 57 years.