Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Plum Rains/梅雨/梅雨

I mentioned in my last post that we are now in the rainy season here.  The season is poetically named "Plum Rains" in Chinese.  Because of the tilt of the earth, and the effect of the Himalaya mountains to our west on the winds, every year East Asia experiences a rainy season in spring.  It arrives earlier in southern areas like Taiwan and the Ryukyu islands in Japan.  Here in Tainan, the season's start perfectly coincided with the start of May this year.  Up in Japan, Korea and northern China though, the rainy season comes a month later in June.
I've always liked this season, ever since I lived in Japan.  Sometimes it's a pain that it rains every day, but thanks to the rain, everything turns green and beautiful.  More importantly for us in southern Taiwan, without this rainy season we'd probably have droughts every year.  It barely rains at all in the winter in southern Taiwan, and the sun is strong and the weather not particularly cold, meaning that there is a lot of evaporation.  Most of the rain that falls throughout the year falls during the rainy season, or during the typhoons that pass through in the summer.
Because it's been raining just about every day here recently (though, admittedly, as I write this, it is sunny out) I'm going to post some nice, sunny flower photos that I took last month here.

日本より一ヶ月も早いけど、台湾は既に梅雨入りをした。琉球列島と同じく、台湾では五月から六月にかけて梅雨が続く。今年は去年より雨が多い気がする。五月一日からほぼ毎日雨が降っている様だ。
不便でもあるが、実は私は日本に住んでいた頃から梅雨が好きだった。雨のお陰で、周りが全部潤って緑になってくる。現在住んでいる台南にとっては梅雨が特に大事だと思う。台湾南部は冬、雨がほとんど降らないし、日差しが強くて、天気が寒くないせいで、蒸発は冬でもけっこう進むのだ。もし梅雨がなければ、恐らく毎年春に旱魃に遭うだろう。
梅雨の雨はありがたいが、やはり毎日降るのは困る事もあるので、先月梅雨前に撮った晴れた日の花の写真を載せとこう。

在臺灣梅雨已經開始吧。今年好像剛好從五月一號下起雨來了。差不多每天下的雨,有時候也覺得很麻煩,但是我們不得不記得是因為有梅雨,所以沒有旱魃。我搬到臺南知道這裡冬天雨這麼少,就嚇了一跳。我的家鄉紐約,一年中甚麼季節雨量都差不多。不過臺南把冬天跟夏天比起來,真的不一樣。

為了忍受每天的下雨,我想把一些上月拍,青天的照片貼在部落格。



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