CHINESE KANG

Chinese kang, an ancient home heating system, is an integrated system for cooking, sleeping,domestic heating and ventilation. It is estimated that in 2004 there were all together 66.85 millionChinese kangs used by 43.64 million rural families and 174 million people. Chinese kang is potentiallyan energy-saving heating system, which uses high thermal mass to store surplus heat from stoveduring cooking and releases it during the rest time for home and bed heating. Such a widely used ruraldomestic heating system is rarely mentioned in the open research literature.