What is this colour I see in the skies before me?
We are now, improbably for March in Shanghai, on Day 5 in a wild streak of completely sunny, bright, warm days. Yesterday I went out in a light cotton Thai sun dress with a medium weight cardigan over my shoulders, not convinced that I could shed so many layers before the month was out. I could and I did before long. I felt almost chipper, what with the sun beating down and the few remaining birds in the city attempting a song.
I’d have skipped along Huaihai lu if all passersby wouldn’t have stopped to stare and point and mutter. A significant proportion of people around me were still bundled up in dark, thick winter coats, as if the warmth wasn’t enough to convince them that this was an irregular March.
When we first moved to Shanghai in February of 2009, I remember distinctly the 20-odd days of non-stop rain that darkened the skies and saturated everything for most of March. I had wet laundry draped over every surface in my flat for nearly a month. The laundry took ages to dry because the air both inside and outside was so chillingly damp, and the laundry was indoors, draped over my kitchen chairs and water dispenser, because my old-skool flat at that time only had a bamboo pole drying rack jutting out from the bedroom window. 21 days of rain meant 21 days of wet laundry.
Our neighbours like airing their dirty laundry at the slightest hint of sunshine
Winters in this city can be exhausting and depressing. Because we are south of the Yangtze river, buildings aren’t usually heated and flats are not insulated. It isn’t cold like Harbin or Dalian, but it feels colder because you never get warm. It’s a bone-aching wet cold. The skies are grey and heavy for weeks on end and the smog settles down and adds layers of thick, white invisibility to the city.
Some mornings, I parted our living room curtains and looked out over the city from an uninterrupted view, 16 floors up, and saw nothing. Zero visibility. Zero visibility mixed with draughts of cold, wet air puffing in through the poorly fitted single-pane windows. If you stop to look carefully at our wall-to-wall living room windows, you might notice the .5 cm cracks and gaps between the panes. This accounts for numb toes in the flat and painful heating bills.
At one point when my parents were visiting, we stuffed the cracks and crevices with a cut up old sweater of mine and lined with panes with multi hued electricians’ tape, which then proceeded to slowly unstick and fall limply from the frame, like sad red, blue, yellow and green linguine.
I believe the Brothers Grimm named themselves after how they felt during winter in Shanghai
In winter and early spring, I find it hard to leave the flat. We keep the curtains closed (nothing to see here, move along) and stay inside, drinking coffee, reading, baking. Not much point in going out. I mean, you can’t even see the outside outside. Why would you want to go out there?
It’s a terrible state of mind to be in when you’re intentionally living abroad. I read too many travel blogs and am wracked with guilt for really not giving a toss about exploring my local area and having meaningful interactions with local people during these months.
My super secret job involves being shipped out to 2nd and 3rd tier cities around China to interview 30 or so people at a time, so when I’m not out there working during the grimmer months, I retreat. My latent melancholia bubbles up and I get cranky and sad and start frequently questioning my life choices. My writer’s block becomes suffocating and I can remedy it only by writing about cooking (it’s impersonal enough and methodical enough to be not overwhelming). Such is winter in this city – and by extension, most of March.
Even the mops and caged bunnies look more chipper in bright sunlight
However, as noted above, this week is different, at least for now. Five whole days of loveliness! I’ve gone for walks every day, thoroughly enjoying the light and the air and the warmth. If there were birds or green grass or flowers anywhere, I’d enjoy those too. I haven’t thought about running away in desperation to Oaxaca or Fez or Zanzibar once since the sun came out. Sure, I’ve thought about running away to those places, but that escapism came from a somewhat happier place this time.
We’ll see how long this can hold out. If not for my sanity, then at least for the cat’s sanity.
How well do you hold up in winter?
The cat asked me to go buy her a pretty satin parasol to shade her during nap time
9 Responses
I don’t know about Shanghai, but having deliberately CHOSEN (and now seriously MISSING) the temperate (albeit often grey and drizzly) climate of Seattle… I can honestly say I LOVE the gray skies of winter, leastwise in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (ah, time for hot soup and fleece – yesss!)
Conversely, I’m now knee-deep in perpetual sunshine here in Saigon. Nice, and the evenings delightful, but… with the sunshine comes the insufferable heat, and worse, humidity so thick you can BITE it! Indeed, as I’m loving Asia, my “Plan” is to settle down in the little town of Dalat – up in the mountains, about 7 hrs. northeast of Saigon, where the climate is preeeeecisely like my beloved Seattle.
Dyanne@TravelnLass recently posted..Diary of a Birthday in Paradise (a.k.a. Phu Quoc Island)
It’s interesting that you say this because I come from the PNW (born and raised on Vancouver Island) and I actually love the winters there. I loved camping up in Long Beach by Tofino in January. I loved walking on the beach in winter storms. I’d love to hide out in my parents’ little house in the forest and be cozy and surrounded by the smell of log fires and fir and moss. It’s not so much that I long for SE Asian perpetual heat here, but rather the hint of life, of nature, of earth that is lacking in Shanghai winters. In summer, we have leaves on the trees and the chattering cicadas. In winter, it’s grey, concrete, polluted. Everything is cold, hard, industrial. I feel no desire to interact with it.
Yay! Spring time! Despite having grown up in Buffalo where winters are dreadfully long and we often would get snow until late March/early April, I feel like I never truly appreciated spring until I moved to China. It’s such a lovely respite from shuffling around my apartment in slippers and twelve layers. All I want to do is sit outside in flip-flops and cute dresses (which I don’t own, but this is my fantasy, so let me imagine) and drink beer…. that is until the mosquitoes show up to usher in summer.
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I think it’s the cold indoor AND outdoor bit that gets to me. It affords no cozy escape. Also, no adorable drifts of snow, no crisp blue skies.
Wow, that does sound miserable! In comparison, I can hardly complain about the long, snowy, dreary winter we had in Istanbul, but it seemed like the whole city was jubilant when the sun finally came out a week or so ago. Being able to sit in the sun and *not* be cold feels like bliss!
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I think the difference between the Istanbul bleak winter and the Shanghai bleak winter is that Istanbul 1. is much prettier in general and affords many places to hide out and feel cozy and comforted (all those cafes with otantik pillows and wood floors and all) and 2. it snows so there’s some variation in the weather and 3. buildings are heated and 4. it’s less polluted (I think) so you don’t get weeks of thick grey white-out.
Also, interestingly, Istanbul has a more pronounced intro to spring- Shanghai seems to be even less green than Istanbul (unless you live way over in Pudong) so you don’t get the birds and flower buds and all. Also, it generally goes from cold and grey to stiflingly hot and humid and grey here, with very little sunshine to bask in. People stay pretty emotionless, with no seasonal uplift come springtime.
I never thought I’d praise an Istanbul winter but I think I can now…
Beautiful Shanghai. How lucky you are to be there and learn their culture and way of life. How I wish I could visit Shanghai.
Karyn18 recently posted..What You Need to Do to Get Rid of Your Thigh Fat
Haha In early February I came back to Pudong airport (from Italy, which was… sunny).
I moved from the sky on your first pic to the one on the third pic. I seriously asked myself what the hell I was doing back to the Middle Kingdom :- P
Well, let’s enjoy April, looking forward for the raining season!
This weekend was gorgeous! Blue skies and sunshine… and I was stuck in a tiny, windowless office in Hangzhou the whole time! I must say, that return to Pudong airport is one I have made so many times and it’s ALWAYS grim and awful, even when the days before and after were nice. It’s like a welcoming committee with a cruel sense of humour.