Chinese Laundry

I have noticed that here in China, especially in this cold weather, the laundry at my house takes days to dry. We have no outside place to hang things so they get hung in the extension of my bedroom.
There is an apparatus for this very task. It's two metal rods, side by side and hung down from the ceiling by cables. These cables run across the ceiling and down the wall to a manual crank so you can raise and lower the bars to your liking. I guess you can put them up completely out of the way in case you have tall people walking around who could hang themselves accidentally.

Now some of the apartments have places outside the windows or in small balconies to hang their laundry and others just get very creative in the community.

I need to tell you that the air here in Changsha is maybe the worst I have ever seen in my world travels. From my window on the 12th floor I can see only about 1 kilometer distance because the air quality is so bad and at best I'm looking through constant haze. The only things I actually see are the ghostly outlines of the tall buildings rising above the 3 or 4 story buildings that fill the area below our window. The sky may have some sun but never gets beyond it grey colour, blue skies don't exist here. In late afternoon, you can see the sun as a red ball but you never see a sunset. The pollution close to the horizon blocks the sun long before it gets to the setting position. I'm saying all this so you will appreciate that not hanging out your laundry is a good thing. I'm thinking this because when we open our windows to let in "fresh" air, the window sill is black with dirt in half a day, and that's when there is no wind.

As I do my little walkabouts in the neighbourhood I get to see laundry hung anywhere it will dry. I have included a few photos of these creative clothes "lines" for your enjoyment;

These lines are just wrapped around the trees and you can find the laundry and the meat chunks and the chicken halves

and the fish all sharing the same lines. Note the pink trousers, the ones with no crotch yet... the child will still be toilet training.

This laundry is in front of the school hung wayyyy up there on the power lines... you can buy special sticks from your local super market for this task. They telescope out so you can reach very far up.

Towels from the spa on the bushes cause all the clothes lines were full

More laundry hanging from the power lines.