The Right Way to Hibernate in the South Without Shivering | Grandma Kouzi
As I set pen to paper, it is the second day of the twelfth lunar month of the Yisi Snake Year, coinciding with the Major Cold solar term and the fourth day of the Fourth Nine. The old saying goes, “During the Third and Fourth Nines, the ice is thick enough to walk on,” marking this period as the coldest.
Yet until recently, the sun had been shining brightly, with midday highs reaching 24°C. Locals refer to this unseasonable warmth as midwinter’s “Little Spring.” As the proverb warns, “If Major Cold brings no chill, neither man nor beast shall find peace.” Clearly, nature has taken this solar term to heart, rolling out a significant cold snap. The forecast called for a low of 1°C—just above freezing. In truth, waking up meant no running water; the pipes had frozen solid. In rural Fujian, water mains are often left exposed above ground. For them to freeze and cut the supply, the temperature must have plummeted to at least -2°C, possibly even lower.
Now in my sixth winter living here in Fujian, I have finally discovered the proper way to stretch out and embrace the season.
I. Meet force with force; meet the cold with a kang
Northern cold is a physical attack, whereas Southern cold is a magic one. The true bite comes from the ‘wet cold’—a double assault of high humidity and low temperature. Water rapidly absorbs and conducts body heat, so skin loses its warmth swiftly in damp air. When temperatures drop into the single digits, your skin feels as though it is steeped in ice water, and developing chilblains is only to be expected.
In the north, when the cold bites too hard, people simply retreat indoors and hunker down. Curling up on a heated kang is all it takes to thaw.
In Fujian, however, stepping indoors only makes it feel colder. Outdoors, you are either exercising or working; movement generates heat from the inside out. But the moment you return inside and stand still, the misery sets in.
Southern homes offer virtually no insulation; inside is just as biting as outside. Paradoxically, on sunny days, the indoors can feel even colder. Southern winter nights are long and drenched in damp cold, leaving both body and mind highly prone to losing their warmth.
When it comes to fending off the chill, those north of the Yellow River rely on central heating, while folks in Yunnan and Sichuan warm themselves by traditional hearths. But the Fujianese? They’re in a league of their own. “You northerners rely entirely on heating to get through the winter; we make do with sheer inner fortitude,” remarked a petite female postal worker, clad in a thin uniform yet standing tall and straight. As for me? I’m swathed in every garment I could cram into my suitcase, shoulders hunched, back stooped, curled into a tight ball.
Though “shivering” and “looking utterly dishevelled” are two entirely different terms, whenever I cower beneath layers of bulky clothes, I can’t help but feel they share a common thread. Both my body and my mind are desperately crying out to stretch out.
Having accepted that I would never be able to adopt the sturdy constitution of Fujian’s locals, in my second year I combined a traditional Northeastern kang with a rocket stove to build a rocket-stove kang—fitting, as the character for “kang” inherently bears the fire radical.
Heating a kang with fire is undoubtedly a northern invention, and it proves perfect for combating the south’s damp chill. Once the stove is lit, the colder it gets outside, the warmer the room becomes. I shed my armoured layers one by one, and my chilled, contracted spirit slowly begins to unfurl.
Not only did I stop dreading the winter cold, but even the most trying late-spring humidity—known locally as the “southern return” spell—became far more bearable. During Fujian’s transition from spring to summer, the mildew-prone rainy season truly lives up to the old saying of “endless drizzle, month after month without a break in the clouds”. The air is so saturated that water appears to trickle down smooth surfaces like tiles and glass. When the prolonged rains set in, I tend the stove as well. Once the fire is going, that clammy, sticky feeling is quickly baked away.
For all its merits, the rocket stove does present a dilemma. The south’s baseline temperature is relatively high; after just a few days of bright sunshine, the thermometer will register well over twenty degrees at midday. Yet the rooms remain damp and chilly, growing even colder once night falls. In moments like these, I inevitably find myself torn over whether or not to light the fire.
At the heart of this hesitation is not a desire to conserve firewood. Rather, it feels rather wasteful to sit in a damp room when the daytime is so warm and the sun is so fine. As someone who prides myself on frugality, I have little patience for squandering natural bounty. Beneath that lies a deeper question: whether my way of living is truly in harmony with the local climate and the resources at hand.
I aspire to live in seamless harmony with my surroundings: eating well and relying on what the local land produces, moving to the rhythm of the seasons, and doing so in comfort. Put simply, I wanted summer to feel cool and pleasant, and winter to feel warm and uncramped. The waterside pavilion had already done much to improve my summer comfort, while the rocket-stove kang kept the winter chills at bay. If I could only resolve that lingering hesitation, it would be perfect. And then the greenhouse barn arrived, transforming into my sun-drenched “Winter Palace” and finally settling the question once and for all.
II. Upcycling: Turning a Granary into a Treasure
The root reason for building it is simply a craving for home-grown produce; I wanted to be able to enjoy my own plantains, papayas, and passion fruits even in the dead of winter. My greenhouse now houses not only various winter vegetables and fruits but also an old granary.
I’ve grown rather fond of the local traditional granaries. Each of these storage units measures two metres square, constructed from thick, solid cypress planks interlocked together. Holding seven or eight cubic metres, they can store several thousand kilograms of grain.
These days, hardly anyone keeps grain at home, so surplus granaries are typically burned or sold off. I’ve acquired several old ones over the years, converting them into a storage room and a rocket-heated cabin, and I’m planning to fit out another as a tea room within the greenhouse.
At first, everyone was against the idea, claiming granaries are lightless, airtight, freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. Word is that in the old days, captured thieves would be locked inside one. Despite a trickle of airflow, the total lack of light made it a proper dungeon.
Fortunately, there’s a hidden gem near Evil Man Valley: the scrap yard. The yard breaks down the assorted items collected from the local streets and lanes, sorting them before selling them on. Certain glass doors from freezers and display cabinets are too far gone for secondary recycling, rendering them the dregs of the scrap heap, unwanted by all. I picked up four of them for ten yuan each. Laid side by side, they match the granary’s width exactly. The four doors can be paired and slid against one another. Mashing two types of cast-offs together turns two negatives into a positive. The pitch-black granary now enjoys both natural light and proper ventilation.
The transparent skylight eliminates the need for wooden roof boards. Using the original boards salvaged from the structure, I built a low bed frame. Lay a tatami mat, and it becomes a tearoom. Add bedding, and it becomes a bed. On sunny days, a wave of heat rushes in as soon as you open the door.
The greenhouse covering provides inherent insulation, but with that radiant skylight overhead, the barn becomes the ultimate sanctuary of warmth. You must shed layers the moment you step inside; by noon, you might find yourself wearing nothing but a short-sleeved shirt. There is no word quite like ‘invigorating’ to capture the sensation of sweating in winter; your shivering little soul instantly melts away into bliss.
The greenhouse barn has solved my winter dilemma. On damp, biting days when temperatures plummet, I stoke the heated brick bed. But as long as there is sun, I sleep in the barn at night. The sunlight bakes the bedding until it is hot and soft—warm, cosy, and energy-efficient, leaving me humming with sheer contentment.
III. After all, it is winter, so a hot drink is essential.
Daily life revolves around clothing, food, shelter, and transport. Keeping the dwelling warm is only half the battle; southern winters bring a seeping, damp chill wherever you go. As for clothing, anything thick and insulating will do. But for a food lover, the real focus is, naturally, on food. In such biting winter conditions, eating and drinking well is paramount.
When the cold sets in, you simply crave something hot to drink. Winter is the perfect season for simmering ginger, radish, and red date soup.
As the old saying goes, “Eat radish in winter and ginger in summer, and you’ll never need a doctor’s prescription.” In reality, winter requires both; you shouldn’t leave the ginger out just because it’s cold.
The ginger has long been self-sufficient. This year’s radishes, however, are truly coming into their own.
The local staple is the white radish. They may look much the same, but there are actually numerous varieties, with growing periods ranging from sixty to one hundred and twenty days.
I’ve recently learned a planting method that I thought was new. In fact, it’s a traditional local technique: mixing seeds with different maturation times and sowing a few grains in the same hole. The early varieties are ready to harvest in just over fifty days. Pulling these early crops frees up exactly the right amount of space for the later varieties to swell. A single sowing can yield fresh, tender radishes for three whole months. By timing it carefully and staggering the plantings, the harvest season can be extended even further.
Homegrown radishes are wonderfully sweet and crisp, perfectly edible raw. But there’s only so much raw radish one can stomach, and in winter, you really want something hot. With my rather generous harvest, this food lover has devised a highly efficient way to work through the surplus.
Warmed through from the inside out, you find the resilience to face the cold. There’s no need to hunch your shoulders or tuck in your neck; instead, stroll at a leisurely pace with the radish tops you’ve pulled, head to the coop to feed the chickens and collect any eggs on the way.
For the next meal, boil a small pot of water, poach two eggs, and ladle in a generous scoop of sweet fermented black-rice wine. This year’s harvest yielded over ten kilos of black glutinous rice. Brewing a bottle of fermented rice wine every so often is the perfect remedy for a stomach prone to winter chills.
Four, Dried Pumpkin Freedom
As a keen foodie, I’ve long coveted dried pumpkin. For the past few years, the yield fell short of expectations, leaving only a sense of wistful regret. This year, I’ve finally achieved pumpkin self-sufficiency and have been experimenting with different methods.
The first approach begins as soon as the temperature drops and the stove is lit. Slice the pumpkin thickly, steam until tender, then lay the slices on a rocket stove to dry. Once dehydrated, steam them a second time and return to the stove to dry again. Pumpkins dried through this triple-steaming, triple-roasting process turn translucent, intensely sweet and fragrant, with a satisfying chew—the ideal winter snack.
While this method is excellent, it yields too little. You can only manage small batches, and since you taste-test as you go, the finished product vanishes almost instantly. Completion and depletion arrive hand in hand.
The second method requires waiting for a cold snap, once the flies have completely disappeared.
Even winter in Fujian has its share of sun-drenched days. Keep a close watch on the weather forecast; when you spot a run of clear, sunny days, it’s time to make sun-dried pumpkin. I have a drying net large enough for the job. I steam one batch on the first day, and another on the second. As shown in the photo, from left to right, they illustrate the progress after one, two, three, and four days. If the sun holds out, by the fifth day you can happily savour the delicious result. If the weather turns foul, by the third day you’ll be feeding them to the chickens in tears. The pumpkin has gone sticky and is no longer fit for human consumption.
The third method is to sun-dry before steaming.
If you slice the pumpkin and steam it straight away, the high moisture content makes subsequent handling more demanding, and it tends to become sticky. Sun-drying first to draw out the moisture before steaming effectively prevents this.
In the past, when making small batches, we’d always taste as we went along. By the time the final batch was finished, we’d practically eaten it all, so we never knew the actual yield for dried pumpkin. This time, we made a point of keeping count.
We chose large pumpkins, slicing twelve at once, weighing over fifty kilograms. After a full day of hard work, we hung every pumpkin ring out under the scorching sun. It took around ten days to dry out the moisture, and the volume shrank considerably. Just as the pumpkin rings had dried to the right stage, a cold snap set in, making it the perfect time to light a fire and roast them.
Before the sun-drying stage and before they entered the steamer, the three trays of pumpkin weighed in at 6.7 kg all together. Once the process was complete, only two trays remained. Weighed along with those two trays, the total came to just 3.4 kg, meaning the net weight is likely no more than 6 *jin* (about 3 kg). Naturally, this does not mean the yield rate is a mere 6%. As a lover of good food, I only guarantee that the dried pumpkin turns out delicious; I make no promises about preserving every single piece of flesh through the lengthy production.
This sun-dried then oven-baked pumpkin, dried to perfection, is hands down the finest snack I have ever tasted.
Dried pumpkin is not only a delight to eat; it likely represents the most nutrient-dense way to consume the gourd. While pumpkin is one of my treasured foods, its high water content and bulky nature naturally limit how much one can practically eat. Transforming it into dried slices changes everything, concentrating the nutritional value significantly within the same volume.
This current cold snap has stretched over five or six days, providing just enough time to complete a batch of dried pumpkin through three rounds of steaming and three rounds of drying, right as I finished this piece on weathering the winter. We have now reached the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. As the old saying goes, “The seventh and eighth of the twelfth month freeze off your chin.” With the Start of Spring falling on the seventeenth, and the proverb warning that “When the Start of Spring falls in the twelfth month, the spring ahead will be cold,” the biting cold will likely persist for some time to come.
Should the cold persist, I will simply prepare another batch of dried pumpkin. If the weather turns mild, I shall retreat to the greenhouse granary to bask in my own “little spring.” Whether cold or warm, each phase has its own particular ease and comfort.
Properly dehydrated and thoroughly sun-dried, the dried pumpkin keeps for a long while, perfect for sipping and snacking at a leisurely pace. The weather forecast promises sunshine tomorrow. While soaking up the rays and browsing through books in the greenhouse, I shall lay out the ultimate winter trio: dried pumpkin and roasted peanuts, paired with a pot of Ruayan rice tea. To say this rivals the legendary comforts of a southern ruler would be no exaggeration.
Unless otherwise stated, all images in this article are provided by the author.
Editor: Xiaodan