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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. Hi, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu. Hi everyone.
So what are we gonna talk about today？
I really don't know. It's just too hot to think about anything.
I know what you're talking about. I mean we have been experiencing heat waves in Beijing. It starts very very early in the morning, but also Europe is going through serious heat wave.
Yeah, Britain, at the moment, this week is bracing for a heat wave.
What is heat wave for Britain？I mean I used to live in London and the highest temperature I remember was barely 30.
This heat wave is particularly unique because it looks like the temperatures are gonna go up to 40℃.
In London?
In the southeast of England.
40℃？Wow!
The thing is it’s not so much the sun, it's more that certain times of the year we get the really hot winds coming from the Sahara in Africa.
And it was never this bad.
This is the first time in England at least that the temperature alert has ever reached red. It's always been amber, but for the first time in history is now red and the government have actually declared a national emergency.
You know I guess for people in lots of parts of China, we would think isn't that exaggerating a little bit, and 40℃ is not really like that serious.
It is a bit different in the UK.
I don't think you guys have air conditioning.
Office buildings like cinemas and other big public buildings have air conditioning. Homes generally don't.
Most of British people don't even have fans.
They do now.
But that's the hot item now.
But houses in the UK they're not built for heat, they actually built for cold and damp weather. So they’re designed to keep heat in, they're not designed to let it out.
So that's why I felt… you answered the question that I always had in my head, like why are some of the, even expensive houses or properties in the UK, they don't seem to be very airy.
No, because particularly the older houses like the Victorian houses and houses built in the early 20th century, they were built for cold and damp weather.
So for example, the house where I grew up that was built in the 1920s, 1930s, and my room, even though it never got as hot as the day when I was a child, my room used to go up to about 35℃ if it was maybe 30℃ outside.
So the temperature actually is much higher inside.
Yes.
It's kind of like living in the oven type of situation.
It is. It’s absolutely horrible. That's one great thing about living in Beijing is that you can have the air con on.
Yeah, but I guess it's also because before this whole maybe global warming extreme weather, people in Britain never really needed air conditioner. You wouldn't buy air conditioning just to use it once a year.
Not even once a year, maybe once every 5 years in the past. But now as you say, temperatures are increasing, the global climate is changing. And one of the things most noticeable, particularly London, is London underground.
We talked about that when we were talking about the tube, 伦敦的那个地铁, suffocatingly hot.
During the summer it’s actually quite dangerous. And when it reaches maybe 28, 30 ℃ they would actually start putting on posters saying if you use London underground…
Stay hydrated.
Stay hydrated, take water. So when I used to work in central London, and during the summer, I would always make sure I had a bottle of water because I've seen too many times on the underground people fainting because of the heat.
You can actually faint, and for people who had never been to London, if you are thinking about the sort of modern subway system in Beijing or Shanghai or in some other major cities in China, you think about the very very air conditioned carriages.
Yeah.
London underground does not have air conditioning, doesn't even have fans.
No.
And usually it's about 5 to 7 ℃ higher than outside.