I grew up in Liaoning, in the northeast of China, where winter is a serious person. Real winter – the kind that arrives in November and doesn’t apologise until spring, where the air bites your face and everyone walks fast with their shoulders up around their ears. As a girl I complained about the cold the way all northern children do: loudly, constantly, and without ever actually wanting it to go away.
So I thought I understood weather. I thought I was tough about it.
Then July in Tirana happened to me.
I want to be dramatic and say I have never known heat like this – but the honest truth is that my body has simply filed a complaint it has never filed before. By eleven in the morning I am negotiating with the fan. By two I have accepted that the fan is winning. I have eaten more watermelon this month than in my entire previous life, I keep a cold bottle pressed to my wrist like it’s medicine, and I have developed strong opinions about which side of the street has shade.
My Albanian friends find this hilarious. “But you’re from the cold place,” they say – as if that should make me better at summer, when in fact it has made me spectacularly worse. A northern girl, wilting, in front of everyone.
I’m told August is warmer. I’ve decided not to believe that yet.
So if you see a small Chinese woman moving very slowly from shade to shade near Myslym Shyri, holding a cold bottle like a treasure – hello. That’s me, surviving. Ask me again in winter, and I’ll be the happiest person in Tirana.
Yang Wang is a Liaoning transplant who runs a small Chinese massage parlour a short walk from Bulevardi Myslym Shyri.