Dust off your umbrellas

So, the Plum Rain season has arrived. At first, Shanghaiist guessed that the onset of wet weather was deliberately brought about by the government. (Yeah, they can do that. How fitting that a city inundated with knock-offs is also susceptible to the occasional shower of fake rain?). We thought that the precipitation might have been perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the SCO Summit, to ensure that Shanghai residents follow the orders they’ve been given to keep their windows shut. (Residents of our particular apartment complex, by the way, have been ordered to close any windows that look down on the Yan’an Lu Expressway. Yeah, like we really wanted to go and throw those windows open anyway …).

But now we’ve just accepted that the Plum Rain, for all the poetic nuances of its name, is just another regular and shitty period in Shanghai’s generally shitty calendar of weather. For any reader who hasn’t experienced a full year of the city’s meteorological highlights, when the Plum Rain clears, it’s going to get really, really hot. But don’t worry! Before too long it will be cold, wet and windy again.

Hmmm. Shanghaiist is possibly in need of a beach holiday.