Working It Cool

The days-of-empire tales of Southeast Asia by Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad pulse and perspire with descriptions of the region's searing heat and sapping humidity. Southeast Asia's weather hasn't changed--Bangkok's November temperature still averages 80DEG, and in Singapore the humidity stays at 84%--but it is being dealt with in a way that might have forced Maugham and Conrad to rewrite some torrid passages. Air conditioning has come to Southeast Asia in force, cooling public places and some homes, changing ways of life, and coining money for the entrepreneurs who work it cool.

Climatized Clients. In Hong Kong, where air-conditioning sales this year will surpass $6,500,000, Engineer James Wu, 43, last week worked on a $2,500,000 third plant for his growing air-conditioner manufacturing business, the biggest in Asia. Wu's China Cold Storage & Engineering Co. turns out Weatherite air conditioners under license from the U.S.'s Westinghouse. His is a rare operation; nearly 90% of the equipment sold in Southeast Asia is imported from the U.S., where Carrier, Fedders, General Electric, Admiral and York have created a profitable market by shipping domestic units with a special 50-cycle motor adapted to Southeast Asian current. Prices vary widely: in Hong Kong, window models are sold as low as $155; but in Saigon, where a 250% tariff is added, they cost more than three times as much as in the U.S.

The cool air is sweeping across the area from Mandalay to Mindanao. In smaller towns, air-conditioned bars are the commerce and conversation meccas that U.S. barrooms were in television's infancy. Studies show that air conditioners raise plant efficiency by as much as 20%, and they are such crowd-drawers for stores, hotels and restaurants that some small eateries have more money invested in their cooling system than in all the rest of the place. Even Hong Kong prostitutes now entertain in air-conditioned "entertainment hostels," where climatized clients are said to tarry longer and tip higher.

Cold Prestige. Air conditioning has a way to go to win full acceptance. It helps banish heat rash and heat-induced impetigo (known as "Hong Kong blister"), but older Asians blame it for everything from asthma to paralysis. Some businessmen refuse to cool offices for fear salesmen will not venture out; since Asians assume that a closed door means an absent merchant, others suffer the high cost of keeping their air conditioners on and their doors open. The biggest inconvenience is that many offices, for reasons of prestige, are kept so frigid that Oriental secretaries have to wear a couple of sweaters to survive. "I keep it too cold," says the manager of Saigon's Caravelle Hotel. "I like people to notice that this hotel is air conditioned."

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