k, so I’m not really talking about China here, I’m talking about Chinese people—largely Han—who live in China. Here’s the deal: no matter what the weather is, it will kill you. You, a foreigner, don’t wear enough clothes. You have the wrong sort of umbrella. And those waterproof hiking boots you bought for scaling up a damp and scenic path are going to make you sick! You’re not pregnant, are you? Ai-ya, your feet got wet: now your baby won’t have eyes!
No matter how nice it is outside, your Chinese friends will find some reason to behave as if it’s lethal. If it is truly awful, they will assure you that it’s fine and that you are just a big spoiled Western baby. True example: Several weeks ago, before Spring Festival, it became bitterly cold in Beijing, with a wind like a knife slicing through your layers of wool and down and filth. One of my students got frostbite running outside to check on her locked bike. The high temperature for most days was a bracing -3 degrees Farenheit, and that’s not including the wind chill factor. The ancient radiators barely breathed a sparrow’s worth of warm air into the frigid concrete rooms we live and teach in. My thermometer registered 42 degrees F as the high at both home and school. I was cold. I mentioned this to the boss of the Foreign Affairs Department.
“Nonsense,” she replied, “I have to open up the windows in my house because it’s too hot. You just don’t wear enough clothes.” Note: she doesn’t live in the crap building the teachers live in, she has the deluxe accommodation reserved for Chinese people. I then demonstrated to her how many layers I was wearing: One set of merino wool long johns and matching long-sleeved shirt, a layer of cotton tights, a layer of Insulate long johns on top of that, a pair of wool pants, a long-sleeved silk turtleneck, and a heavy cashmere sweater. I had on insulated work boots in black suede as well as an extra pair of cashmere sox. I completed this nifty ensemble with a black wool beret (chic at any cost, that’s me) and a black cashmere wrap which I used like a blanket when I sat to type at my desk. For the record, I also wore a bra and panties, but that’s a given. Frankly, I was so wrapped up in clothing that I couldn’t bend over to retrieve dropped chalk and I appointed a monitor in the classroom to do so for me. As I stripped down and showed off each layer, I was greeted with gales of laughter by The Boss.
“Oh, you are so foolish,” she chuckled. “Your clothes are so big! Maybe you could take a walk at lunch today instead of eating, get some exercise and fresh air.”
I was, at that time, limping badly and could barely stand through my 40-minute lectures. The thought of stumping down the street and around the track in the Arctic wonderland of Beijing did not strike me as a particularly attractive alternate to having lunch at home with my dog Dickie curled up on my lap.
Several weeks later, the weather warmed up considerably, and we had a mild snowfall. I mean, a quarter of an inch at most. It was 30 degrees higher (F) than the previous weeks and I encouraged my students to go outside and enjoy the sights. The Boss shrieked in horror. “Don’t tell the students to go outside! It is too cold! It is snowing! Ai-ya, that stuff can get on you and kill you!”
Ironically, the day before the temperature had dropped to the usual low teens and yet the students had been called to a general meeting of an hour’s duration on the playing field and forced to stand at attention in sub-zero temperatures to display their school spirit. At least they didn’t have to wave little red books. But to WALK in the SNOW—that is just inviting death into your front parlor now, isn’t it?
Chinese people believe wind gives you arthritis, rain causes diarrhea, and sunshine makes your skin dark and ugly (they have that one right.) Since I have had arthritis, I can attest that my left shoulder hurts like a mother before big wind storms, and rain makes my legs ache badly. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believes the body struggles to maintain a balance among the five elements—wood, fire, earth, metal, and water—and eight guiding principles which include cold and heat. A condition such as arthritis is caused by too much wind, too much cold, and too much dampness. Considering my hot and lethal temper, my bout with arthritis comes as kind of a shock. The basic tenets of TCM have, I think, seeped into people’s consciousness to the point where the REAL weather is seen as the culprit, rather than the internal elements. Thus if you stomped in a rain puddle at the age of four and your mother didn’t stop you, she is branded as a lazy slut and you are probably going to die of heart disease at age 40 as a result. In other words, she’s as negligent a mother as the woman I’d see at the local convenience store/gas station back in Oregon who was buying her kids Luden Cough Drops to suck on for breakfast so they’d shut up and behave at school.
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