Sidelines | Remember, it was once cold
Spring is playing hide and seek with Beijingers.
The weather has been typical of Beijing's early spring this week. A sandstorm choked up the city on Monday, bringing the temperature down for days until it almost bordered on winter. A day of rainfall finally washed the Chinese capital clean on Friday, followed only by a windy weekend. The coldness can bite even harder in March as Beijing gradually puts its central heating service to a stop. Room without an air conditioner is left at the mercy of sunshine.
Spring's couriers have long arrived but so far kept a low profile. Winter jasmine punctures the greyness of the outgoing season with its mellowness. Leaves are barely green enough to reveal themselves to but a pair of searching eyes. Both have announced the approach of their master whose occasional warm breaths have also sent a thawing message that, however, is soon drowned in the sweeping cold front.
Apparently, winter doesn't buckle easily. The temperature has been moving turbulently despite some balmy patches. Beijingers were tricked by a sudden surge of warmth into putting away their overcoats towards the end of last month, only to hastily retrieve them from the bottom of closets on the strength of the following plunge. The impatience is understandable. If the pandemic grounds us no more, why let the nip in the air have its way?
The bitterness of late frost meeting the sweetness in the spring's warm promise features constantly in classical Chinese poetry. Poets of ancient times with only fire at their disposal in winter felt the pain of cold weather more strongly, and therefore longed for spring’s warmth more desperately.
"The day, now warm, now cold,
Wears out my soul." (Li Qingzhao, 1084 – 1155, Song Dynasty)
With flowers blossoming, leaves stretching and frost thawing, the world is felt to have come back to life again. The sights bring hope and joy.
“Road's muddy after rainfall of days,
Falling petals leave no trace,
Robbing my shoes are they, as unknowingly I pace." (Lu You, 1125 – 1210, Song Dynasty)
To this joyfulness sometimes a tinge of sadness is added by poets who lament the fleetingness of the joyful season.
"Butterflies dancing, birds twittering,
As if are at me laughing,
Who sorrows for spring." (Lu You, 1125 – 1210, Song Dynasty)
What lies at the heart of spring's literary aesthetic for the Chinese intelligentsia is the guarantee that everything will from now on only head for the better. In another word, hope. Even an occasional warm breeze during early spring speaks the promise that winter is ending soon. Although the feeling of cold still lingers on our skins, entering March we can finally be hopeful of the prosperity of life again. The poets who feel sorrow for spring's brevity are probably so addicted to the sweetness of hoping that what is hoped for becomes less important.
Notwithstanding cultural differences, how we feel about the nature translates into figures of speech in roughly the same manner. In the absence of the company which he longs for, Shakespeare also bemoans in Sonnet 98 that spring feels like winter. Spring represents the beginning of life and winter the opposite. With warmth comes hope and with cold, desperation. In this mindset, we can understand instantly what the term "Cold War" denotes: A long and bitter political winter during which humanity was in constant fear of total destruction.
For Generation Z, born in the post-Cold War era, it may be completely disorientating that the only thing that kept the world intact during more than half of a century of confrontation was the idea of "avoiding mutual assured destruction." Global development was frozen in the political hostility between the two camps like land in the depth of winter.
For those whose memory of the Cold War is still somewhat fresh, the scenario that the world may be heading for another may seem to loom larger and larger, as China and the U.S. crossed swords in Anchorage, Alaska this week. The two major global powers cannot see eye to eye on so many fronts that the mismanagement of any of them may lead to a full-blown clash. As spring is warming up the northern hemisphere, the political atmosphere is left in winter – one more reason to feel regret about this spring in addition to what weighs down the Chinese poets' hearts.
The harsher winter's chill is, the more we appreciate spring's warm breath. To avoid a "new Cold War," it's better for everyone to remember just how icy the first one was. It may be too soon to think that the relationship between China and the U.S. has entered its "early spring" after just one ice-breaking dialogue. But the least we can hope for is the ground on which the two countries can work together will not be frozen up again.