climate


 * Climate**
 * NORTH: Winters in the north fall between December and March and are really cold. Beijing's temperature does not rise above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, although it will generally be dry and sunny. North of the Great Wall is much colder with temperatures dropping well below freezing. Summer in the north is around May to August. Beijing temperatures can occasionally rise to 100 degrees Fahrenheit or more. July and August are also the rainy months in the city. In both the north and south, most of the rainfall is in summer.
 * CENTRAL: In the Yangtze River Valley area -including Shanghai- summers are long, hot and humid. Wuhan, Chongqing and Nanjing have been called "the three furnaces" by the Chinese. It is the most hot between April and October. Winters are short and cold, with temperatures dipping well below freezing.
 * SOUTH: In the far south, around Guangzhou, the hot, humid periods last from around April through September, and temperatures can rise to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This is also the rainy season. Typhoons are expected to hit the southeast coast between July and September. There is a short winter from January to March, nowhere near as cold as in the north, but temperature statistics do not really indicate just how cold it can get, so bring warm clothes.
 * WEST: Try to avoid China's west at the height of summer. Industrial Urumqi is dismal at this time and Turpan has unbearable maximum temperatures of around 118 degrees Fahrenheit. In the winter, this region is as formidably cold as the rest of northern China. In Urumqi the average temperature in January is around minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, with minimums down to almost minus 86 degrees Fahrenheit.


 * My Trip:** When I first looked out my hotel window for the first time, I was very disappointed. Beijing had a dark gray sky and it looked like it was about to[[image:smoke-in-beijing.jpg align="right"]] rain. My mom laughed, she said, "It's not an overcast, it's the pollution."