Sweltering summer heats up jokes, economy

BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- It takes one minute for butter to melt, 10 minutes for eggs to set and 20 minutes for slices of beef to cook, not on a griddle, but on a sun-baked balcony.

A local reporter found this out when he placed the foods on a metal railing and the concrete floor of a fourth-floor balcony in Shanghai.

Since pictures and video of the cooking experiment were uploaded on Tuesday, they have spread like wildfire across the Internet.

Shanghai has experienced the hottest July in 140 years, with 25 days reaching or exceeding 35 degrees Celsius this month, weather records show.

Hoping to find a respite from the sweltering summer, sweaty people are turning to frying foods in the sun, cracking jokes and uploading heat-related photos.

JEERING JOKES

On microblogging site Sina Weibo, theater director Wang Chaoge posted an altered image of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece "Mona Lisa" in which her long dark locks are replaced with a pixie cut.

"It's too hot," read the caption to the image uploaded on Tuesday.

More than 40 cities in China have experienced extreme heat, with highs creeping above 40 degrees Celsius as of Tuesday. The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) on Tuesday initiated level-two emergency response to the heat -- the highest such response launched by the country to date -- for nine provinces and municipalities in east and central China.

Over 14 million Sina Weibo posts were related to the summer heat as of Wednesday, and over 100,000 featured jeers and jokes, especially ones of people comparing themselves to grilled meats and fish.