One year ago today, Anna and I arrived in China. Wrote these notes:
Beijing:
Bright sun, subzero temperatures.
Like Saigon in a cold snap.
That Asian sunlight, washed out yellow.
Quarantine card machine – does it iron the cards?
Anna talking to a Chinese guy on the plane, and then another on the bus from the airport into the city. Confused about where to get off. The Chinese chap helped us. We got off at a godforsaken intersection in the middle of a motorway, with our new friend flagging down a cab on the side of a huge roundabout. It took him a while to explain where we wanted to go – in Chinese – and it occurred to us we would have been doomed if we’d tried to do this on our own. Without him we would never have made it to our hotel.
Went out to explore in the evening. Beijing huge and grey, spacious. Huge roads and relatively few people apart. Walked down a ghost street parallel to the neon madness of the main drag
When I think of Beijing I think of earth. The colour is everywhere – mud roads, freshly dug construction pits, even the colour of the buildings seem brown beyond the high rises of the main street.
Cold as hell but still pleasant – no wind giving a chill factor. Breath fogging the air, a clean crispness to it.
Found a great little restaurant for dumplings! They produced an English menu at the last minute which saved us prodding hopefully around in phrasebooks for the right word. The menu listed all booze under the helpful heading “Inebriants”.
