Hats off to those who brave the dog days without AC

Vivid amid Beijing's dog days of July and August are my memories of the sweltering summer decades ago when my parents, shortly after building our two-story family home in Omaha, Nebraska, decided to get central air conditioning.

"Central air" was an expensive luxury that few in my neighborhood could afford. Some of my luckier friends had window air conditioners in their homes, which somewhat cooled a single room. Yet, for all the grinding noise and drip of condensation, these window units did little to bring comfort elsewhere in the house.

Daytime was bad enough during summer on the Midwestern plains of the United States, where on the worst days you really could fry an egg on the sidewalk. But in the hottest, most humid days of the season, nighttime was no better. The temperature would barely dip after dark, so sleep was a sweaty challenge that involved endless tossing and turning.

I could relate, therefore, to the misery depicted in a short story I read as a child. In August Heat, William Fryer Harvey describes the craziness-inducing effects of summer's inescapable, tormenting temperatures: "The heat is stifling. It is enough to send a man mad." In the tale, the oppressive heat is presumed to have led to murder most pointless.

Fortunately, Omaha's relentless summer heat never drove us so close to the abyss. But try to imagine the elation my siblings and I felt when our parents announced that they were about to have air conditioning, or AC as we came to call it, installed.

Little did we know then that our mother, wise in the ways of our hardy farmer forebears, had no intention of letting us loll away the days indoors, in the laziness-inducing comfort of an air-conditioned home.

Instead, on the very first day the vents throughout the house were opened to usher in refreshingly cool air, she ordered us to go outside and play beneath the unforgiving sun until we were summoned for supper. To prevent us from sneaking inside, which indeed we intended to do, she locked the front and back doors.

Due to this practice, which continued throughout that summer, air conditioning remained a luxury that we never took for granted.

A few years later, while I was working at Bronco's Hamburgers, the restaurant's AC conked out. For more than a week during the blast-furnace stretch of that awful summer, the crew had to toil in misery in the hot kitchen, where the mercury had no headroom left in the thermometer. Under those circumstances, standing over a hot grill while flipping burgers was certainly nothing to envy.

I recall as well how, while visiting relatives in San Antonio, Texas, during the peak of one year's punishing hot spell, we went to Mexico for a long day of walking, bargain-hunting and bartering in open markets. On the way back, exhausted, we stopped at the oddly named Shamrock Bar for some refreshments (Coke with ice for us kids). Ah, the darkened bar's excessively cold air conditioning－the establishment was the only one in town so equipped－kept us wanting to linger even longer, but soon we had to venture back out into the pepper-wilting Mexican sun.

Today, although my apartment in Beijing has two wall-mounted air-conditioning units, I cannot help but think of those living here and in other, hotter Chinese cities who do not have such a luxury. I also worry about and greatly respect those who work long hours outdoors beneath the scorching sun.

These hard-pressed souls demonstrate the endurance and fortitude that our not-so-distant ancestors likewise needed to survive the harsh summers on the farm.

Remembering the effect that air conditioning had on the nasty blue wasps that occasionally were discovered hiding in the curtains of my family's home in summer－these belligerent stinging insects were rendered sluggish by the cold and therefore easy to swat－I understand why my mother insisted that we venture daily into the sweltering outdoors.

She knew that, by not allowing air conditioning to soften us, my siblings and I would grow up stronger and more resilient.

With temperatures soaring to maddening highs worldwide this summer, there is a bit of a bright side: We have a great opportunity to test our fortitude, as shown with surprising stoicism by those around us whose homes depend on mere fans and open windows for cooling relief.