42.3°C!!! (Tianjin's slated for 46°C and Handan, Hebei has 51°C in the forecasts — if that makes you "feel any cooler"...) The recent heatwave has busted previous records for late June since those "weather frogs" (as the Swiss call 'em) started doing those records. The headliner is a dead giveaway.

Elsewhere in the Wanbao: Beijingers are also sometimes a little Shanghai-ish (as in being difficult, precision-mad, and "stuff like that"), but Shanghai folks take pole position as being the most difficult to deal with. (You would have imagined that longer Metro networks yielded nicer folks. Wrong...)

The story of the day still is very much heatwave-related. Line 1 travellers (Subway folks!) suffer the most, as old (grey-red) trains are fan-based and only the new tri-color (black, grey and -- red, sorry, Eason Chan) trains (with half-height handles) are aircon-based. Fan-based trains are a bad mix between sardine cans and worse. Another really difficult way to get around: the bus system. Oh heaven forbid when the bus stops halfway through! Even with all the windows open!

Friday it is tomorrow -- official temps are 24°C to 35°C but we say get prepared for stuff as hot as 45°C. (No whys. Just our instinct.) Cars with plates trailing in 4s and 9s are OUT of the 5th Ring (not the beltway itself, though) from 07:00 through to 20:00.

A rare case of malware has taken the Beijingology.com page hostage, and the linked Twitter account @Beijingology seems to be hanging by its last legs as it suspends itself into thin air. Oh well, there's still hope: follow David on Twitter to find out more about the Jing -- especially if it's got something to do with the Beijing Subway!