Prisoner In A Sea Of Glass

I have a slightly shaky sense of balance. I was never able to make any progress with ice-skating (although I did essay it several times when I was living in Toronto a decade ago), nor have I even been tempted to try skiing. Activities like those, that require you to be permanently slightly off balance, frankly, terrify me. I didn't even much enjoy going on the slides when I was a kid.

I have an exaggerated, almost phobic horror of breaking a bone (and I have managed never to do so - apart from a few, unconfirmed, hairline crack injuries sustained during sports).

Therefore, the possibility of falling over on an icy pavement - and maybe breaking something - produces an almost debilitating anxiety in me. (It's not exactly an irrational fear, given how expensive expat medical treatment can be, and given that I don't have any health insurance; but it is, I concede, probably an excessive fear.)

This problem is exacerbated manyfold for me by the fact that none of my shoes or boots seem to provide ANY GRIP AT ALL in the slippery conditions which have prevailed in Beijing since the New Year.

The first few days were the worst, since little or no snow-clearing had been done over the weekend. But even now that most of the sidewalks have been cleared, a variety of hazards remain. Much of the snow melted by gritting is particularly treacherous, a mixture of water and tiny ice crystals which can, at times, be super-slippery. Much of the melted snow has almost immediately refrozen, producing long thin slicks of ice - often almost invisible 'black ice'. And much of the snow hasn't been cleared at all, but after a day or two of steady tramping has been packed down so hard that it presents just as glassily smooth a surface as the ice patches, but more perilously uneven. It doesn't help that, outside of the major streets (where I assume they must have used some sort of steam-hose, or maybe a chemical solvent to scour the sidewalks so thoroughly), the typical Chinese methods of snow clearing involve scraping with a snow-shovel or brushing aside with a whisk broom - both of which tend to leave a fine residue of polished, compacted, super-slippery snow in a micro-thin layer across the whole road or sidewalk, or at least in obstinate icy nuggets that refuse to be dislodged or dangerous little ridges lurking in the gaps between paving slabs to ambush the unwary. (Oh yes, and most Chinese sidewalks feature a strip of raised indentations, supposedly to help direct the blind [although I don't think I've ever seen a blind person availing himself of this supposed helpfulness]. These are a bit of a trip hazard at the best of times, and made out of some very slippery ceramic-like substance; when they get wet or icy, they're lethal. I wonder if they aren't in fact part of a savage plot to euthanise the blind population.) It's usually safer to trudge through the slush in the bicycle lanes.

There's been no snow-clearing done at all in the lane leading to my apartment. I'm only 300 or 400 yards from the main road, but for the last few days it has been like running a gauntlet, and has been deterring me even from venturing out to the local 7/11 (a walk that usually takes me only 3 or 4 minutes, but now requires more like 10).

Trying to get any significant distance across town is even more daunting. Taxi availability - usually so generous here - has shrunk to nothing: half-hour waits are becoming the norm, and many people are being forced to take their chances with the 'black cabs', the unscrupulous unlicensed operators who may try to hold you to ransom for any fare they care to name. The subway and buses are, therefore, packed out - uncomfortably, dangerously so.

Thus, you don't have much choice but to walk almost everywhere. Or rather, slither.

And I find that just too exhausting - emotionally, more than physically. Half a dozen slides and wobbles and near-falls every minute or two rapidly wears me out.

I rather fear I shall be trapped here in the new Froog Towers until we get a decent thaw. That might be at least another month. Oh god!