checking in
Beijing is shrouded in a grey film, and the air is thick and muggy, like how whey might be if it strained to be temporarily gaseous. Everything seems to be under construction. When we turned into the university, we passed two ancients squatting in the ribbed shade of the entrance gates, absorbed in a game of Chinese chess. There are Communist guards on nearly every corner, for whom smiling seems morally reprehensible - the younger guards are almost desperately stoic. Not even my toothiest, most resplendent grin could coax a response from those granite visages. I'm hurt. Also, vastly amused.
Beijingers are lavish with their horns, and the road is a cornucopia of movement and sound. Cars hurtle down the entire length of a road honking continuously; amidst the seizures of traffic I saw a bicycle weaving insanely between the smallest gaps (defying all known laws of physical space) and a tiny runt of a girl bumping up and down on the back saddle. And the buses are primed for caricature - I've yet to see one that isn't practically bulging at the windows with crammed, roiling flesh.
Administration here still exists on triple-carbon-copied paper, rubber-stamped thrice. I know this, because I was in a queue for an hour while this procedure played and replayed and replayed out in a bureaucratic stupor.
and the sun pounds down on everything here, beats it into a kind of lethargic submission. Serves me right for coming in summer, I suppose, but there are times when the wind races over burned skin and the coolness, by sheer contrast to the hellblaze before, borders on the positively divine.
Test: F*un Gong! D*m*cr*cy! T**n*nm*n Papers!