I lived in Harbin, China for five months. As they do not yet have the luxury of having Western-style washers and dryers in their apartments, the Chinese for the most part wash their clothes indoors by hand and then hang them up to dry, either indoors or outdoors. In summertime, it makes perfect sense to hang them outdoors. But Harbin gets extremely cold in winter, sometimes down to -40 degrees. And yet the Harbinese, for some seemingly unexplicable reason, hang their wet clothes outside to dry in winter. Or at least they think they will dry, but of course they do not. They freeze into stiff ice, and when brought indoors they melt, thereby becoming wet (the opposite of dry). Resultantly, they have to hang them indoors to dry. It is true. I actually conducted an experiment. I washed my clothes by hand. I hung half of them up inside and the other half up on my balcony. In four hours the clothes hung up indoors were already dry. The clothes on the balcony after four hours were iced and stiff. I brought them indoors and hung them up. Within an hour, the water began to melt and drip on the floor, and another hour later they were sopping wet. I had to hang them up for an additional four hours until they were satisfactorily dry. This is what the Chinese continue to do. I saw it every day during winter. It defies logical explanation. I have enquired with great rigour as to WHY they do this. I have not yet received a satisfactory response.