As Chinese authorities issue warnings for extreme heat in the country’s eastern region, students are leaving their stuffy dormitories to camp in hallways and supermarkets.
Some have ditched their campuses altogether.
“We sometimes go out to stay in hotels for the air-conditioning,” a 20-year-old university student in the northeastern Changchun city, who declined to be named, tells the BBC. “There are always a few days in a year where it’s unbearably hot.”
Hotels have become popular among students seeking to avoid sweaty nights in their dormitories, which typically house four to eight people a room and do not have air conditioning.
But for many the move is a last resort. “Checking into a hotel is a huge expense for us students,” the student in Changchun says.
So on less desperate days, he perches a bowl of ice cubes in front of a small fan to cool down his dormitory room – what he calls “a homemade air-conditioner”. The invention has tided him over as the semester ended this week.
The sanfu season, known to be China’s “dog days”, usually starts in mid-July. But it arrived early this year, with temperatures in the eastern region soaring above 40C (104F) over the past week – and catching millions of residents off guard.