When friends and relatives ask me what time of year to visit, mid-January isn’t usually on my list of suggestions. This isn’t because I particularly dislike winter, or because the kind of people who visit me are somehow wimpy. I don’t. They’re not. It’s just that winter is not such a flattering season for Beijing.
The city has all the basic unlovely winter stuff: black ice, short days, the flu. But it also has attributes all its own: the neighbors in the alleyway scolding you for not wearing enough long underwear, the smell of coal so strong it wakes you up at night, the heavy, sticky, strips of vinyl which hang in the doorways of shops to keep in the heat and when you pass through them cling to your face. Also the fact that face the vinyl is glued to is likely to be flaking off because the air is so dry and that this means that probably bits of other people’s faces are stuck to the vinyl too.
But this will be my last winter here, at least for a few years. I’m not feeling too sentimental about breathing my last lungful of coal, but I am starting to pay more attention to the things that are excellent about Beijing in winter. Simon has already told you about one of them, ice-skating on chairs, but there are many more. Visit the China Blog over the next few days to find out what they are. Or feel free to send your favorites and we’ll post them.
Susan Jakes