Heat, Drought Hit China; Some Blame Year of the Dragon

A heat wave across much of China has brought death, water shortages and threats to mental health but should not be blamed on the unlucky Year of the Dragon, official newspapers said.

Temperatures of up to 104 degrees and severe drought in China’s eastern Anhui province have left peasants in the area short of drinking water, the newspaper China Daily said Friday. The province is a major grain producer, but lack of water for irrigation is threatening this year’s harvest.

Earlier reports said temperatures of 100 degrees had killed 83 people, mostly elderly, in the central city of Nanjing this month.

Beijing is also experiencing unusually high temperatures and humidity, packing public swimming pools and boosting street watermelon sales.

The Farmers’ Daily said many superstitious Chinese are blaming the droughts and heat on the 1988 Year of the Dragon, traditionally associated with abnormal weather and other disasters. China’s last Dragon Year, 1976, saw the death of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the Tangshan earthquake, which killed at least 250,000 people.

But the paper called called such beliefs “unscientific.”