How to avoid getting hot under the collar despite the weather
I have a degree in history, so I know everything about you.
I have memorized your place and date of birth, how to pronounce your name and am even familiar with your more stellar accomplishments and theories.
Yes, Aristotle and Zhang Heng … I’m talking to you two.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384322 BC) posited that the cosmos was composed of terrestrial and celestial realms, and on Earth — the realm which most concerned him — there were four core components: earth, wind, fire and water.
Readers from Kentucky and Guiyang, Guizhou province, may be familiar with firewater — perhaps in the form of bourbon or baijiu.
But today we’re more concerned with the former — fire — as it seems to be taking center stage in Beijing as July has just passed the infernal inferno known as its Ides.
Surrounding our Hellenic thinker’s era like temporal bookends was China’s Warring States Period (475-221 BC), during which two scholars — Gan Shi and Shi Shen — invented the armillary sphere, which was improved upon in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 — 220) by Zhang Heng, who himself devised a metallic sphere of concentric rings that helped illustrate cosmological theory in China at the time.
Zhang argued, politely of course, without getting too hot under the collar, that the universe resembled an onion, with Earth at the center and water-filled celestial layers wrapped around, all supported by qi — which means the lifeforce both holding together and innervating everything in the cosmos, and also means anger or rage.
In the interests of time, let’s surmise that the human body is a microcosm of the cosmos, with a balance between the forces of qi — as well as the four Aristotelian components — key to maintaining health and an ideal core temperature.
As Beijing currently endures the hottest weather seen in … 10 months perhaps it’s best to better manage our qi (i.e. lifeforce or anger management) rather than giving birth to more, or sheng qi, which means being teed off or hot under the collar during the ongoing scorching summer swelter.
I’m both exothermic and thermophobic, both of which are legal and PC character traits by the way.
Guys who have them are even said to be rather hot.
Therefore, for the record I would just like to dispel with two common misconceptions.
Number One: Using home air conditioners leads to the grippe or consumption.
When the mercury flirts with 40 C — or when Earthly temperatures seem positively Mercurial — high-pressure system poltroons like you and me make due with mercurial miens — and consumption can increase, especially during the World Cup with cold Tsingtao on tap.
But embracing your AC like it were your Amazon warrior princess heading off for a yearlong campaign against the Aztecs — leaving you behind to mow the lawn and water the petunias — is a sure way to beat the wrath of Huitzilopochtli, a busy deity who as both the Aztec god of war and the sun, presumably wore both a closed Burgonet and a sun visor — with a tube of SPF 50 in his (or her) back pocket.
Number Two: There’s nothing more refreshing than a glass of boiling water on a hot summer’s day.
Not sure where to begin with this one, but I get it — in principle — you’re trying to sweat even more to cool the core.
But why scald your hands and tonsils with hot water? Mugs peeps …
To that I say, why sweat at all?
Sports fans, try this. Buy several terry hand towels of varying colors and wrap them around your neck during the hot season.
Not only does it prove a bulwark against the gravitational pull of browsweat to the torso and beyond (thus saving multiple daily wardrobe changes), but it also cuts shaving time in half, and you can mix and match with shirt colors.
If Huitzilopochtli is female, she needn’t worry about covering neck fuzz.
Thank you for your attention, and stay cool, Beijing.
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