One Moon: It’s 33 Degrees Today. Are You Wearing Enough Clothes?

It’s 33 Degrees Today. Are You Wearing Enough Clothes?

ONE MOON COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS

Written by Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist

Every morning, before I even look outside my window, I look at another season. It appears on my phone.

My mother has a habit of telling me the temperature back home.

I think it is her way of sharing something real, something happening around her body, across the 6,000 miles between us.

"Yesterday was so hot and stuffy," she complained on the phone. "It was only around 33 degrees, but I couldn’t even go walking in the afternoon."

I looked down at myself while she spoke. “Mum, I’m literally wearing a down jacket.”

She laughed.

I could almost picture her shaking her head on the other end of the phone.

For a moment, the six thousand miles between us no longer felt like distance, only two different seasons.

Shanghai is not a city with dramatic seasons. In some ways, Auckland even felt familiar to me at first: humid air, sudden rain, winters that settle into your bones more than snow ever could.

During my first year overseas, those familiarities between the two cities comforted me more than I expected. I live on Vincent Street. The shape of the street, the rows of trees along the footpath, all remind me of the neighbourhood where I grew up in Shanghai - Gubei Huangjincheng Avenue. Even the name Vincent carries echoes of someone I was once close to. It is strange how a foreign city can feel like home in fragments, in borrowed names, in the way light hits a familiar curve of pavement.

But after returning to China for a visit and then coming back to Auckland, I realised familiarity and sameness are not the same thing.

The weather was similar.

The seasons were not.

My mother is talking about heatwaves while I pull my down jacket tighter around my shoulders. We are living through opposite versions of the same year. Yet my phone edits two seasons into the same frame.

A photo of iced watermelon.

A message: "It's 33 degrees today."

My hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea.

Bare winter branches outside my window.

My eyes hold both. My body cannot.

Now I am no longer fully inside those seasons; my body is learning a different rhythm.

July smells like rain and cold earth.

December is for the beach.

Chinese New Year can arrive with sunshine instead of layers of winter clothing.

Back home, my body used to know the seasons without thinking.

Humidity meant the plum rain season was coming. The smell of osmanthus meant autumn had arrived. Certain foods would appear at certain times of the year without needing explanation. I never realised how much time was stored physically until I moved across hemispheres.

“Today is still so hot,” my mother texted me. “Remember to drink more water.”

Outside the window, the wind was hitting the glass.

I typed back: “It’s cold here. But at least staying hydrated is something both seasons agree on.”

A few seconds later, my phone started ringing. “You’re wearing enough clothes, right?”

“Mum,” I laughed, “I’m literally wearing a down jacket.”

She laughed too.

We were looking at the same screen.

Our bodies just weren't reading the same calendar.