The heat had been going on for more than a month, and for half of that time the temperature stayed at 37°C. It was not until August 5 that things finally began to cool a little. Then, sometime after 1 a.m. on August 7, a heavy rainstorm arrived without warning.
I came back to my hometown at the end of June. During this long spell of extreme heat, I could still fall asleep at night at first, but later it became harder and harder. In the end I used what little savings I had to buy a bamboo sleeping mat and a good fan from a well-known brand. Before going to sleep, I would set the fan on a timer so that it would shut off automatically in the second half of the night, when the air usually turned a bit cooler.
Some people from the south might say that 37°C is nothing special to them, since their summers often get even hotter. But this is exactly what people mean by each place shapes its own people. Where you are born and where you grow up naturally determines what kinds of climate, food, and dialect you can adapt to with ease. If someone moves to a place where these things are very different, they are not going to adjust in a very short time. It is a simple truth, yet a surprising number of people do not understand it. After years of living and working away from home, I have met far too many such people.
When I was working at a vocational school in the south, local teachers—both older ones and even younger colleagues—would tell me, "Ask your family to help with a down payment, take out a mortgage, buy an apartment here, and later bring your parents over. The climate here is so good. It's suitable for living and ideal for retirement." Whether my family could afford a down payment is one issue and not the point here. The real problem was this idea of bringing my parents there. If I had actually done that, they might not have lasted long in that climate. I would have become an indirect killer—of my own parents. If those same teachers were asked to go live in my hometown instead, what would they feel? Would they still speak so casually?
And when talking about temperature, people often overlook humidity. In general, a relative humidity of 40% to 70% is considered most suitable for humans and animals. Once it goes above 70%, the harm caused under the same temperature can increase dramatically with each rise in humidity. Even at 0°C, the way the cold feels at 40% humidity and at 90% humidity is completely different. That is the real core of those endless internet arguments about whether northern winters or southern winters feel colder. The debate never ends mostly because people keep ignoring humidity.
A concrete example comes to mind. In late November 2017, there was an outbreak of influenza where I was living at the time. Nearly an entire local university came down with it, and the clinics around the campus were packed with patients. There was no campus hospital, so everything nearby was overwhelmed. In those days I only went out briefly at night for a walk, and I even pulled out the down jacket I wore back in my hometown. Even then, I still felt cold. Under normal circumstances, I would sweat from walking in that same jacket at home. But there, I was still freezing. The reason was simple: the outdoor high temperature in that place was -7°C, with humidity staying around 97%, while in my hometown the high at the same time was -6°C and the humidity was 33%.
This year brought an unusually severe heatwave, something said to be rare on at least a 60-year scale, and the meteorological explanations have already been given in the news. But for ordinary people, the issue is much more direct: over the years, the average temperature and humidity where we live have remained within the range our bodies learned to tolerate. This year, however, the heat suddenly exceeded previous highs, and the humidity also went beyond what had been typical even under similar weather conditions. Of course it became hard to endure.
Thankfully, after a full month of sauna-like weather, things started easing on August 5. Then came the rain after 1 a.m. on August 7, as if the sky had been holding itself back for too long and suddenly lost control.
My mother had been stung by a hornet that evening, and I stayed up helping treat the wound, so I did not get to sleep until a little after midnight. Then, sometime after one in the morning, I was jolted awake by the sound of rain pounding against the color steel roof outside, along with thunder so violent it felt like the sky and earth were splitting apart. Even with my eyes closed, I could sense how intense the lightning was. As I write this, the rain is still falling. The thunder has stopped, but the downpour continues.
A trace of cool wind came in through the window with the rain and swept through the room. It carried away the oppressive heat of the past several days and left me feeling clear-headed and refreshed. The irritability brought on by the muggy weather seemed to go with it. After this storm passes, the days will still be hot, but not like before—not that punishing combination of high temperature and high humidity. This is simply how weather turns from one state to another, and in its own way it is also a reminder of impermanence.
In weather like this, even the owner of the tofu shop that supplies our soy milk did not come to the village to sell tofu, soy milk, and fried dough sticks. And as for me, the coolness brought by the rain made me forget all about making breakfast. Instead I sat here writing. It is already close to 10:30 in the morning now, and I am genuinely hungry.