Beijing has been experiencing bitterly cold weather since Jan. 6, with some areas also experiencing power outages without warning and heating disruptions, as local residents took to social media to cry out in distress. (Photo source: Weibo)
Beijing began to experience severe cold weather on Jan. 6, with temperatures dropping to the lowest since 1966, and some areas also experienced power outages without warning and heating disruptions, as local residents took to social media to cry out in distress.
On Jan. 6, several areas in Beijing experienced ultra-low temperatures of minus 17 degrees Celsius, and on Jan. 7, the temperature dropped again to minus 19.6 degrees Celsius. According to the Beijing Meteorological Station, Beijing will continue to experience severe cold weather in the next few days.
The extremely cold weather has caused people to cry out, and many popular topics such as “Beijing is cold”, “Beijing is cold and crying” and “Beijingers are freezing and freezing” have appeared on microblogs, with more than 20 million readers.
Under such severe external conditions, power outages without warning occurred in Haidian District, Chaoyang District, Pinggu District and other areas. According to the Hong Kong Economic Times, power outages occurred in some areas of Beijing in the early morning of the 6th, and were later restored, but were interrupted again by about 6 p.m.
Although the mainland media did not report the news of power outages in some parts of Beijing, many netizens posted on microblogs, complaining about the suffering of power outages on cold days. “I took a taxi and queued for an hour and a half, and arrived home to find a power outage. …… It was a dark and cold winter night.” “What is more tragic than having a power outage when you rely on electricity to heat your home after changing from coal to electricity! ” “In Beijing, which is said to be the coldest in the 21st century, the power and water are out and the elevator is out, so I’m embarrassed to order a takeaway to comfort myself.” “On Wednesday night, I experienced the feeling of being woken up twice by the cold, and then yesterday I went home sick without any expectations.” “Visibility: zero; Beijing’s temperature plummeted, water, electricity and heating stopped at home”, “Will I freeze to death?”
This is not the first power outage in several areas of Beijing in recent days, with some residents of the Xinjie compound in Chaoyang District claiming on Weibo that there have been three power outages going into 2021.
On the second day of blackouts in many parts of Beijing, Beijing Electric Power Company announced that as of 21:00 on January 6, the electricity load of Beijing’s power grid reached 24.51 million kilowatts, setting a new historical record. Bai Jing, director of the State Grid Beijing Electricity Regulation and Control Center, said the main reason for this sharp rise in grid load was the concentrated growth of residents’ heating load due to the extremely cold weather. This statement by the authorities seems to justify the power outages without warning in many parts of Beijing.
However, many local people said it was the lack of heating that necessitated the need to turn on air conditioners to keep warm. Some Beijingers told overseas media that the collective heating, which is charged, has become even colder than in previous years, failing to reach even the required minimum heating temperature of 18 degrees Celsius.
“Many heating units are engaged in rubbish, coming to measure the temperature to 18 degrees and then ignore it,” a member of the public questioned on Weibo, “Please ask the leaders concerned, would you let your parents and children live in such an environment? Is the livelihood of the people’s issues to ‘pass’ as the standard?”
The day after the power outage in Beijing, netizens in several areas of Shanghai also posted about power outages at home. In the face of power outages in several major Chinese cities, Chinese Communist Party Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying responded at a regular press conference, however, that “this issue should be very clear, some people and media abroad may not understand the situation, then after they are clear about the situation, they need not worry about China’s power supply and demand.”
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