From kang to kongtiao: China's twentieth century cooling

This essay suggests an alternative strategy for thinking about changes in Chinese society in recent decades, using not economic data or theories of development, but the metaphor of temperature. It argues that the cultural imperative in China has, in recent decades, switched from that of keeping warm to that of keeping cool. This change is made tangible through two key objects: The kang (), the northern Chinese heated bed, and the kongtiao (), the air conditioner. The antiquity of the kang is explored as an object that is key to the development of Chinese civilization in the inhospitable northern climes. Moving between physical and metaphorical ideas of heat, the essay argues that throughout much of the twentieth-century, heating remained the main focus. Twentieth-century revolutions and mass campaigns under Mao Zedong were undeniably 'hot,' aiming to stoke the fire of revolution and radical social change. Under the reforms following Mao's death, however, politics 'cooled off:' the political system crystalized and the frenzy of mass campaigns cooled down. This was accompanied by social changes, including what can be called the rise of individual cool, defined by ironic detachment, hedonism and narcissism. The new cool society and cool persona find their architectural accompaniment in the kongtiao, the air conditioner, which has become a must for urban living, even in north China. The kongtiao is presented as an ultimately unsocial device, a machine with intensive energy requirements that dumps heat into communal spaces in the effort to preserve individual comfort.