On these rainy days as a nuisance and as a bliss
Shanghai’s weather has been a topic of discussions, or rather complaints, over the last few weeks. I can hardly recall a meeting that has not been prefaced by small talks on the watery inconvenience. We lamented about the dampness, stickiness, fogginess, gloominess and muddiness — in both literal and metaphorical senses.
Such small talks sometimes ended with all parties shaking their heads in agreement about their newfound solidarity against the rainy weather.
Other times, it reached a puzzling climax when someone declared: “We’ve all been Shanghai’ed!”
The rainy days had an especially acute effect on newcomers. I have been asked by three people, all new to this part of the planet, whether this weather was typical in this season.
When I told them that heavy rains tend to fall during the summer months, their reactions were a cocktail of disbelief and sympathy. I gather that they will not plan on spending the summer in town.
Such dislike for Shanghai’s rainy weather is certainly not new.
When British diplomats, traders, and missionaries first came to the city in the 1840s, they dotted their journals and letters with an astounding amount of complaints in true British fashion. One early sojourner wrote, “as regards the people who live in this region, the dampness moistens them, the saltiness stiffens them, the wind shrivels them, and the stagnant waters poison them.”
While records from the earlier Chinese dynasties contained detailed information about floods and storms, rarely did the ancient Chinese scholar-officials register a grievance about the rainy weather.
To be clear, when the rains became torrential and resulted in casualties, they would be meticulously recorded. But as for the rainy weather itself, it was never frowned upon by the ancient historians. Did the early Chinese inhabitants simply not care? Quite unlikely. As a matter of fact, they cared profoundly.
To the natives, the rainy weather had two implications. First, the abundance of precipitation predicted the bounty of the year’s rice harvest.
Channeled through an intricate system of canals and ditches, rainwater brought nourishment to rice paddies, which meant food. Rains, especially at this time of the year, could not have been a more auspicious sign for the new year’s agricultural productivity.
Second, the misty landscape constituted one of the most enduring sources of inspiration for poets and painters.
They sentimentalized over the sights and sounds of rains, and canonized the misty landscape as a cornerstone of ancient Chinese art.
Taken together, those rainy days of Shanghai were good for the stomach and the soul.
It is, therefore, our lost ability to appreciate the rain that is the trouble. On rainy days, we moderns feel inconvenienced, because we are accustomed to hardened surfaces, insulated buildings, and air-conditioned rooms. Even storage space for our stuff is often advertised as “climate-controlled.”
On these rainy days, we suffer ever more from congested roads, impossible wait times for waimai deliveries, and even molds in our apartments.
But these are all distinctively urban problems. We see them as problems only because we take the comfort of modern urban life for granted.
On these rainy days of Shanghai, the ecosystem sends us subtle hints of what life had always been like before we became modern urbanites.
The rain is our first clue into the delights and challenges of pre-modern times, when traveling, for example, meant taking a slow sampan.
On these rainy days of Shanghai, perhaps we just need to reimagine.
Yifei Li is an assistant professor of environmental studies at NYU Shanghai. Isabella Baranyk contributed to this essay.