Sweltering Chinese summer cooks up food and jokes

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 in China.

This was what a man found out when he placed the foods on a metal railing and the concrete floor of a fourth-floor balcony in Shanghai. After photos and video of the cooking experiment were uploaded on the internet, they have spread like wildfire.

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

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

On micro-blogging site Sina Weibo, theatre 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.

More than 40 cities in China have experienced extreme heat, with highs creeping above 40 degrees Celsius.

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

"The only difference between me and grilled meat is some seasoning," one netizen wrote.

"The hospital diagnosed me with third-degree burns after I accidentally fell onto the road today on my way to work," another wrote, mocking an alert about scorching asphalt on streets.

Till Tuesday, at least 10 people in Shanghai died of heatstroke, according to the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

People have also been swarming into air-conditioned libraries and subway stations to escape the heat.