mountains clothes underwear

i have a greenbuilding certification test coming up on monday so i have been studying up the wazoo.  then i head out to the mountains in the western part of the country. so i'm wondering how to keep my clothes clean while traveling. i will be at a hotel on two contiguous nights only at the beginning of the trip. the remaining days i'm sleeping in a different room each night. i have to travel light, so i won't be taking the heavy laptop, which is more a movable workstation than a laptop. i need to carry as few things as possible as if i was camping, because that is what it will be like. i am planning to take an electric blanket, because i have experienced cold hotels in China and now that it's winter in the mountains, i should expect the same. if it's not too heavy, i might even pack a small electric portable heater, to use mainly in the bathroom. (probably i will skip doing that.) so i'm thinking that as far as clothes i will carry the ones i use to fly to Chengdu and back to Shanghai. then the remaining time i will use a pair of extreme cold weather pants used for mountain hiking, two sets of thermal underwear, an extreme weather winter coat, snow boots, t-shirts and sweater. i imagine that i can alternate the thermal underwear; i can wash them occasionally and put in a plastic bag when they did not dry overnight, putting it to dry the next night. when i check into a hotel it will be probably rather late to ask if they could wash my clothes to have them ready by early morning. so i can't depend on that service. hopefully the cold weather pants are of a material that you can wash at night and wear in the morning. but if they don't dry, i would not be able to use them the next day. it may not be practical to be washing clothes daily. my friends who bycicled from Chengdu to Tibet used to wash clothes and shower daily at the beginning of the trip, then did so less frequently when it was more difficult to do so. i guess i have to build some flexibility into what to wear and when. anyhoo, those are my musings.

the friend i traveled with extensively in the past, who is not accompanying me on this trip, said i should plan carefully everything i plan to do, since i'm slow in communicating. luckily, i arranged for two trips organized by a Chinese travel tour company. it won't be bilingual, but usually young people study English and they are quick to help in situations when one gets hung up. also after two years in the country i think i have studied the language sufficiently to be able to function for simple things.