The streets are full of Snow in Beijing.
It's the second time I've seen it snow substantially in my time here, and this time it isn't melting.
The snow is the best thing that has ever happened to this city (save perhaps for when the Americans were here, overseeing the return home of millions of Japanese soldiers whose homeland had so recently folded).
About 2+ feet of snow in 24 hours in a city that is not prepared to handle an inch.
The city has effectively shutdown, save for the public transportation that goes on seemly undaunted. Few citizens dare to drive today; the roads have a tenth of the regular traffic.
The air is the cleanest it has been in months...it actually looks like air today, even hinting at a sort of transparency...the thick, endless soup of smog ephemerally absent.
People are even spitting less too, because of the cold; the men still make awful snot-gurgling noises, but as their faces are covered, they are unable to spit upon the streets.
The only problem is that the people seem to be too lazy to walk on the sidewalks, so they're walking all over the streets as the cars drive; in the best cases, this means they slow down traffic even further; in the worse cases, cars, sliding, are unable to break in time--thwack!
I just saw a whole pack of Chinese almost completely wiped out by a sliding car.
Even so, I must say,
Like a tourniquet struggling against an irremediable wound,
Beijing life is comfortable today.
-Eric C.
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