Beyond Shivering: The Right Posture for a Southern Winter | Grandma Kouzi
I picked up my pen on the second day of the twelfth lunar month of the Year of the Yi-Si Snake, the Major Cold solar term, the fourth day of the fourth nine-day period. The old saying goes, “During the third and fourth nine-day periods, you walk on ice”—the fourth nine should be the coldest stretch.
But before the cold bit, the sun had blazed for days on end, with midday highs of 24 degrees. Locals call this a “little spring” in the depths of winter. An old proverb warns, “If Major Cold isn’t cold, men and horses grow uneasy,” and clearly the heavens took the solar term to heart, delivering a sharp plunge in temperature. The forecast minimum was 1 degree above zero. In reality, there was no water at dawn—the pipes had frozen solid. Much of the tap plumbing in this part of rural Fujian is left exposed, so when ice stops the flow, the true temperature is at least minus 2, possibly lower.
In my sixth winter in Fujian, I have finally found the right posture for stretching out fully and embracing the cold season.
I. When Soldiers Come, the General Defends; When Cold Comes, the Kang Defends
Northern cold is a physical attack; southern cold is a magical attack. The magic lies in the “damp cold”—the double squeeze of “high humidity plus low temperature.” Water absorbs and conducts body heat rapidly, so in damp air the skin loses warmth fast. Once the temperature drops into single digits, it feels as though your skin is soaking in icy water. Chilblains? Perfectly normal.
In the north, when the cold gets too much, you go home and curl up on the heated kang, and you’re warm in no time.
In a Fujian winter, stepping indoors makes you colder. Outside you’re either exercising or working; move your body and heat rises from within. But once you duck inside and stop, you’re done for.
Southern houses have almost no insulation; inside is as cold as outside. On a sunny day, the room actually feels colder. The damp, frigid nights of a southern winter stretch on endlessly, and both body and mind can slip into hypothermia without warning.
To fight the cold, places north of the Yellow River turn on the central heating; Yunnan and Sichuan light the indoor fire pit. But Fujian people? They are the toughest of all. “You northerners survive winter on radiators,” she said, “we survive on sheer inner righteousness.” The speaker was a slight young woman at the post office, uniform thin, posture ramrod straight. Me? I had the entire contents of my suitcase wrapped around me, shoulders hunched, back curved, shrunk into a trembling ball.
Now, “瑟缩” (cowering) and “猥琐” (looking furtive) are two completely different words, yet when I’m hunched and shrinking inside all those layers, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re related. Both my body and my spirit were desperate to unfurl.
Once I had accepted that “sheer inner righteousness” was not in my repertoire, the following year I combined the northeastern heated kang with a rocket stove and built what I call a rocket stove kang—after all, the Chinese character for “kang” (炕) comes naturally with the fire radical attached.
Heating a kang with a fire is unquestionably a northern invention, and it turns out to be perfectly suited to combating southern damp cold. Once the kang is lit, the colder it gets outside, the warmer the room becomes. Suit-of-armor layers come off one by one, and my cold-shrivelled soul slowly unfurls.
Not only do I no longer dread the winter cold; even the dreaded Hui Nan Tian—that soggy spell of spring-to-summer transition in southern China when moisture condenses on every surface—becomes a little more bearable. In Fujian’s swing between spring and summer, the wet season truly brings “relentless rain, falling month after month without pause.” The air is so saturated that water trickles down smooth surfaces—tiles, glass. When the endless drizzle sets in, I light the stove, let the heat work through the room, and that clinging, clammy wetness simply evaporates.
The rocket stove is wonderful, but it has its awkward moments. Southern baseline temperatures are high, and a few consecutive sunny days can push the thermometer past twenty degrees by noon. Yet the shaded side of the room stays cold, and nighttime is colder still. At such times it’s hard not to agonise: should I light the stove or not?
The root of the dilemma isn’t saving firewood or fuel. It’s the feeling that with such warmth and such glorious sunshine during the day, letting it all go unused feels like a waste. As a thrifty person, I cannot bear to squander what nature freely offers. Beneath that lies an even deeper question: am I living in sync with the local land and the resources at hand, here and now?
I want to be fully at one with this place—eating what the land provides, eating it well, living to the rhythm of its four seasons, and living comfortably. To be more specific: comfortable in summer, unafraid of the heat; unfurled in winter, unafraid of the cold. The overwater pavilion has greatly improved my summer comfort; the rocket stove kang has spared me from cowering. If I could also conquer the dilemma, all would be well. And so it was, until the polytunnel granary became my sunlit “Winter Palace,” the great ender of all inner conflict.
II. Waste to Treasure, the Granary Reborn
The fundamental reason for building one is greediness of the tongue—I wanted to eat my own plantains, papayas, and passion fruit even in winter. My polytunnel not only grows all kinds of winter vegetables and fruit; it also houses a granary.
I have a deep love for the old local granaries. These traditional grain-storage structures measure two metres on each side, assembled from whole thick planks of Chinese fir interlocking one into another, with a volume of seven or eight cubic metres, enough to hold several thousand jin of grain.
Nowadays, hardly anyone stores their own grain. The retired granaries are either burned for fuel or sold off. I have bought several old ones one after another, converting them into my storeroom and a little rocket stove kang cabin, and I am planning to make a granary tea room inside the polytunnel.
At first, everyone objected, saying granaries let in neither light nor air—cold in winter, stifling in summer. It is said that the older generation would lock a caught thief inside a granary: there was enough ventilation, but no light at all. A proper “pitch-black dungeon.”
Fortunately, near Villain’s Valley there is a treasure trove—a scrap recycling depot. The depot takes in items collected from door to door, dismantles them, and sells the parts by category. Some glass doors from freezer display cabinets are rejected at the secondary recycling stage—the waste of waste; nobody wants them. I bought them for ten yuan apiece. Four freezer doors fitted together are just about the width of a granary; paired up and facing each other, the four doors slide back and forth. Two kinds of waste joined together—negative times negative makes positive. The once pitch-black granary now has both light and airflow.
The transparent roof let me spare some of the granary’s original top boards. Using the original wooden planks removed from the roof, I built a low bed, laid a tatami mat on top, and there you have a tea room. Pile on some bedding, and it becomes a bed. On a sunny day, open the door and a wave of heat rushes in.
A polytunnel is a warm structure by nature; the “Bright Peak” overhead makes the granary warmth upon warmth. You have to shed layers the moment you step in; by midday, you are down to a short-sleeved shirt. Feeling hot enough to sweat in the depths of winter—how can a single word express the sheer bliss? The cowering little soul instantly unfurls.
The polytunnel granary solved my winter dilemma. On damp, cold, plunging-temperature days, I go fire up the big kang; on sunny days, I sleep in the granary at night. The sun bakes the bedding hot and soft—warm, cosy, and energy-efficient. So blissful I cannot help humming with contentment.
III. It’s Winter—of Course You Need Something Warm to Drink
In the rhythm of daily life—clothing, food, shelter, travel—warm shelter alone is not enough. The south’s winter is a magical attack everywhere you go; the cold follows wherever you step. Clothing? As long as it is thick and warm enough, it all amounts to the same. What a foodie delves into more eagerly is, naturally, food. In a damp, frigid winter, one must eat and drink especially well.
When the cold bites, all one wants is something hot. Winter is the perfect season for a soup of ginger, radish, and dates.
An old saying goes, “Eat radish in winter, ginger in summer, and no doctor need ever write a prescription.” In truth, winter calls not only for radish but equally for ginger.
My old ginger has long since been entirely self-sufficient. This year’s radishes are coming into their own.
Locals grow white radish. They look much alike, but there are many varieties, with growing seasons ranging from sixty days to ninety to a hundred and twenty.
I have lately learned a new method—really the old local way of planting. You mix seeds with different growing seasons together, dropping a few into each hole. The early varieties can be pulled and eaten after barely fifty days, and yanking them out clears the ground perfectly for the late varieties to spread their shoulders. Plant once and eat for three months: every day brings fresh, plump, watery radishes. Time it right, sow another batch after a while, and the harvest stretches on and on.
The radishes I grow myself are sweet and crisp enough to eat raw. But raw eating only goes so far, and in winter all I want is something hot. I have rather more radishes than I need, so the foodie in me devised a way to demolish them quickly and in quantity.
Warmed through from the inside, I have the nerve to face the cold. No need to hunch my shoulders or duck my neck on the way out. I stroll over, unhurried, carrying the radish tops I snapped off, feed the chickens, and pick up the eggs while I’m there.
Next meal: a small pot of boiling water, two poached eggs, then a ladleful of sweet black glutinous rice wine poured over the top. This year I harvested over twenty jin of black glutinous rice; every so often I make a jar of the sweet fermented wine—the best remedy for a chronically cold stomach in the depths of winter.
IV. Dried Pumpkin Freedom
The foodie in me has long been coveting dried pumpkin. In previous years the harvest fell short of hopes, leaving only wistful resentment. This year, at last, pumpkin freedom—and I have tried different methods.
The first method begins the moment the cold sets in and the fire goes on. Pumpkin is cut into thick slices, steamed until cooked through, then laid on the rocket stove to roast. Once dry, it goes back into the steamer for a second round, then roasts again. Three steams and three roasts yields dried pumpkin that is translucent, intensely sweet, deeply fragrant, and wonderfully chewy—the finest winter snack.
Wonderful as this method is, the output is tiny. You can’t make much at a time, and eating as you go means the batch and the eating finish at almost the same moment. Finished and finished-off arrive simultaneously.
The second method requires the deep cold to set in and the flies to vanish for good.
Fujian winters do have their brilliant sunlit days. You must watch the forecast like a hawk; the moment several consecutive days of clear sunshine appear on the horizon, you can start sun-drying pumpkin. I have a drying net large enough for the task: steam one pot the first day, another the next. As you can see in the photo, from left to right, the pieces show what they look like after one, two, three, and four days. With good sun, by day five you can be smiling and tasting something delicious. With poor sun, by day three you’ll be weeping and feeding it to the chickens—the pumpkin has turned slimy, and no human can eat it.
The third method: sun-dry first, then steam.
If you cut and steam pumpkin directly, the moisture content is too high and the follow-up steps become demanding—everything tends to turn sticky. Dry first, let the moisture leave, then steam, and stickiness is effectively prevented.
When I used to make pumpkin in small batches, I ate as I went. By the time the batch was finished, I had eaten nearly all of it, so I never knew the actual yield rate of dried pumpkin. This time I made a point of keeping a count.
I selected large pumpkins, cut twelve at once—over a hundred jin. I worked a full day hanging every pumpkin ring under the blazing sun. After about ten days the moisture was gone and the volume had shrunk dramatically. With the raw pumpkin rings sun-dried to just the right degree, this cold snap arrived just in time, and I could fire up the stove for roasting.
Before the pumpkin slices go into the steamer, they weigh 6.7 kilograms together with all three steamer trays. Once finished, the dried pumpkin fills just two trays; weighed together with those two trays it comes to 3.4 kilograms—an estimated net weight of no more than six jin. Of course, this does not mean the yield rate for dried pumpkin is a flat six per cent. The foodie in me can only guarantee that the dried pumpkin will taste wonderful; I cannot guarantee the pumpkin’s bodily safety throughout the long process.
Dried pumpkin made by the sun-dry-then-bake method is the finest snack I have ever eaten.
Dried pumpkin is not only delicious; it is probably the most nutritionally dense way to eat pumpkin. Pumpkin is one of my treasured foods, but because of its high water content and bulky size, you can only ever eat so much of it. Dried pumpkin changes all that—it packs vastly more nutrients into the same volume.
This cold snap lasted five or six days, just long enough to finish a batch with three steams and three roasts, and to complete writing this hibernation piece. By then it was the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. The old saying goes, “On the seventh and eighth of the twelfth month, the cold could freeze off your jaw.” The seventeenth brings the Start of Spring, and they say, “If Spring strikes in the twelfth month, spring is sure to bite with cold.” Perhaps the cold days ahead still have a while to run.
If the cold persists, I will make another batch of dried pumpkin. If it warms up, I will retreat into the polytunnel granary and enjoy my “little spring”. Cold or warm, each has its own way of letting the soul unfurl and settle at ease.
Dried pumpkin, fully dehydrated and sun-cured, keeps for a very long time—I can take my time eating through it. The forecast says tomorrow will be sunny. When I am basking in the sun in the polytunnel, leafing through a leisurely book, I set my perfect winter companion trio beside me: dried pumpkin plus roasted peanuts, paired with Ruiyan rice tea—even a king facing south would not trade places.
Unless otherwise noted, all images in this article are provided by the author
Editor: Xiaodan