The cold now becomes acute, news of snowstorms and pictures of heavy fall start to appear.

We are now at the heart of winter!

As I step out of the door, the cold wet air—like some living creature—slowly yet closely penetrates the layer upon layer I wear, clings to my skin and makes me shiver. The air being wet, is icily cold, pregnant with snow.

Wet, it’s said, is the origin of the word ‘winter’.

The Chinese though, takes a completely different approach in the naming of this season.

冬 dōng, winter, the Chinese says, it’s the end of the year, it pronounces very much like 终 zhōng, the end.

结绳记事, knotting rope to record events, or Quipu, is said to be a way to communicate in ancient China before written language was invented. And the Oracle version of ‘冬’ is directly from this method:

The Character evolves, it keeps the original meaning of 终, and takes notice of the frozen water:

The character we use now 冬, is a simplified form of this version: the upper part 夂 means the end, and the two strokes under means the ice.

It indeed gives one a sense of ending. The black trees against a pale white sky has the solemnity of a funeral. Then as you turn a corner, very colorful festive lights appears—looks very much like a fairy tale in this gloomness. It delights your eyes and lifts your heart. It makes you marvel at human’s ability to thwart adversities: it must be in winter that we made up all these fairy tales, to cheat away the long dull hours, to cheer a depressed spirit.

So it’s the end. We look back from the beginning, and wonder of wonders, all the stories on the way, all the memories we have collected, it must be a miracle that we are living and breathing, that we have come this far.

And plans, we realize, we learn from experiences, could only give a general guide of our directions, for encounters and stories would happen on the way, and take us unawares.

So we walk on on this wintery day, looking at the bare trees and thinking back, at the end of the year, the stories on the way, and hope—for it’s human’s nature to hope—that better stories are yet to come.