Since temperatures are dropping, thought I'd share this wintry anecdote:
晉太康二年冬大寒，
In the Jin dynasty, during the winter of the second year of the Taikang reign, there was a deep freeze.

南洲人見二白鶴語於橋下，曰：今茲寒不減堯崩年也。」於是飛去。
A person from Nanzhou saw two white cranes talking to one another beneath a bridge. One said, “This cold is no less severe than the year the great Yao perished.” With that, they flew away.

Not only do the cranes in this story talk, they are also extremely long lived! (As was thought to be true of cranes in general, along with turtles). The second year of the Taikang reign corresponds to 281-282 CE, and the legendary Yao 堯 is said to have lived ca. 2300 BCE

I was a little surprised to learn that this anecdote is the source of a very well traveled allusion. References to "Cranes talking" 鶴語 pop up in poetry from the Tang to the Qing.

Suihua ji li 歲華紀麗, A Tang dynasty compendium of seasonal lore, even includes "White cranes talking" 白鶴語 in a list of winter images. But cranes apparently have a lot to say: a reference to talking cranes may also refer to a different anecdote...

...this one about an person named Ding Lingwei 丁令威 who had become an immortal (xian 仙) and transformed into a crane. A hunter with a bow encounters the crane, but before he can shoot it down it flies even higher, and taunts him in a rhyme...

..."A bird? A bird? It's me, Ding Lingwei. I left my home a thousand years ago, and returned for the first time today. Though the city walls are like before, the people are not the same. You'd better learn to become immortal, or you'll end up in a grave."

有鳥有鳥丁令威，去家千年今始归。城郭如故人民非，何不學仙冢壘壘 (Yes, I've taken some liberties to make this sort-of rhyme, even though it still doesn't really. This is twitter and it's Saturday morning...)

Both anecdotes come from early medieval anomaly account collections, the first the "Garden of Marvels" Yi yuan 異苑, and the second from the sequel to "In Search of the Supernatural" Soushen hou ji 搜神後記

Yi yuan is said to date from the 5th century, and Soushen hou ji from the 4th, but collections like these often survive only in citations preserved in later texts. The versions we have today are mostly the product of later recompilation efforts so misattribution is not uncommon.

Because of that, it's always interesting to see which stories live on in allusions and idioms, and which fade into obscurity. As far as I know it would be pretty odd for someone today to describe a cold winter as a "Cranes talking about Yao year," but maybe I'm wrong?