Well, the winter weather has officially arrived in Chicago and we’re just a month into autumn. We’ve had frigid temperatures and snow (twice) this week.
In Chinese, people say wo pa leng, or “I’m afraid of the cold.” It’s not a fear as much as a dislike. And it was a phrase I learned early on in my Mandarin studies, which coincidentally aligned with my first winter in China.
It was in Nanjing many years ago and I can’t say I wasn’t prepared for living in damp quarters without heat. I stocked up on silk long underwear from Yue Hwa, a Chinese department store in Hong Kong. A trenchcoat (my heaviest coat in Hong Kong), sweatshirt and long sleeved shirts helped but didn’t completely keep out the cold.
My friends lent me a pair of maoku, or sweater long johns, which I kept on day and night. I slept in the room at the end of the hallway in this photo.
I also learned to drink green tea that winter. A lot of green tea.
Are you afraid of the cold, or do you welcome it after a summer of heat and perhaps humidity?
My students are already swaddled up like Antarctic explorers, telling me to “put more on”… it’s not that it’s terribly cold, but the media here is telling them what they should be wearing.
Of course, trying to tell them that they shouldn’t believe everything they see on TV is a lost cause.
My Mother In Law thinks I’m insane because I won’t wear four layers of long johns. I don’t want to look like the Michelin Man.
Of course, when it’s really cold outside here, the lecture rooms are heated to the point where the students are cooked to sleep in their heavy coats (they won’t take them off) – and I’m teaching in t-shirt and jeans (I move around a lot in class).
It’s all a bit bloody silly, really.