I was scrolling through my feed, half-asleep with a lukewarm coffee in hand, when a clip of Eileen Gu popped up. She wasn’t talking about slopes or medals. She was talking about tanghulu—those glossy, candied hawthorns on a stick. "I used to eat it all the time as a kid," she said with that familiar grin, "but since we only came back in the summers, I had no idea it was supposed to be a winter thing."
You know that feeling? When a simple memory hits you with a weird sense of warmth? My coffee suddenly tasted a bit sweeter.
She laughed, adding how she loves the warmth of people and food, even when it’s freezing outside. Everyone asks if she’s used to the cold. "I think it’s precisely because it’s winter…" she trailed off, but you could fill in the blank. The cold makes you seek out warmth, and sometimes, that warmth comes on a stick, crackling with hardened sugar.
It got me thinking about my own tanghulu memory. Not from a Beijing hutong, but from a makeshift stall outside our local Asian supermarket in Melbourne. It was a blistering summer day, 35 degrees easy. My grandma, visiting from back home, saw it and her eyes lit up. "Let’s get one," she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to eat a ‘winter snack’ under the scorching sun. The vendor, an older uncle, chuckled but didn’t bat an eye. He handed over two sticks. The sugar shell melted almost instantly in the heat, making our fingers sticky, but the sour punch of the hawthorn was still there. My grandma took a bite and sighed, a happy, content sound. "Tastes like home," she said. Not like winter. Like home.
That’s the thing Eileen tapped into, maybe without even trying. For so many of us living oceans away, certain foods stop being seasonal. They become emotional anchors. A bite of tanghulu isn’t about celebrating Chinese New Year or braving the cold—it’s about grabbing a piece of childhood, a thread connecting you to a place that lives more in your heart than on a map.
I remember reading somewhere that scent and taste are the strongest triggers for memory. One study even said they can evoke more vivid recollections than pictures or sounds. So when Eileen talks about the warmth of tanghulu, she’s not wrong. That sugar-coated memory literally fires up different parts of your brain. It’s a physical feeling.
It’s funny, isn’t it? We chase these connections. We scroll through Weibo, watching clips of celebrities sharing snippets of a culture we miss. We see variety shows filming in our hometowns, or new period dramas showcasing streets we once walked. It’s a comfort. Until… the dreaded "This content is not available in your region" pops up. Or the video buffers endlessly, stuck on a loading wheel that feels like it’s taunting you.
The craving hits—for the show, for the news, for a simple clip of an athlete talking about street food—and suddenly, you’re not just far from home, you’re digitally locked out. The warmth of the memory meets the cold frustration of a geo-block. You just want to watch the thing, you know?
So, when Eileen Gu smiles and talks about her summer tanghulu, I get it. It’s about holding onto a feeling, however and whenever you can. Even if it means defying seasons, or, for that matter, digital borders. That desire to connect, to taste, to watch, to remember—it doesn’t have a season. It’s always there.
What about you? Is there a food or a show that instantly teleports you back, no matter where you are in the world? Drop your comfort watch or your ‘any-season’ snack in the comments. Let’s swap stories—maybe we can all feel a little closer to home.
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PC：
mobile：
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