The weather doesn't always warm up quite as quickly as it should, as we'd hope, but there are a number of other dependable markers of the shift in the seasons here in Beijing.
Signs of Spring in China's capital
The air fills up with 'cotton wool'.
(Botany is not one of my stronger subjects, but there is a variety of tree very common here in Beijing - a 'cottonwood', I suppose! - which at this time of year releases balls of 'cotton wool' in colossal quantities. I imagine it must be some sort of seed dispersal device. I've heard it said - by bullshitters, preying on my ignorance of botany? - that these trees are sex-differentiated, and that the Beijing government is trying to cut down on the annual plague of airborne cotton wool balls by culling the 'female' trees. I haven't noticed any trees being removed, but there have certainly been some radical pruning policies adopted - for all the trees here - in recent years. And I think the quantities of cotton wool have been diminishing as a result, although there's still an awful lot of it. Five or six years ago, when the phenomenon seemed to be at its height, the sidewalks would often be ankle-deep in the stuff, and it could become a hazard - or a serious annoyance, at any rate - to your breathing.)
The air fills up with sand.
(Spring and autumn are the occasion for a twice-yearly splurge of small-scale building work around the city: repairing, renovating or rebuilding portions of the old slum housing in the hutong districts, upgrading water and sewage pipes, and sometimes relaying roads and sidewalks. Hence, there are piles of building materials - especially piles of sand - blocking alleys and sidewalks everywhere. I suppose it makes sense to do this kind of work before the more extreme weather of summer and winter sets in; it is unfortunate, however, that the sudden change of temperature in our brief transitional seasons causes them to be a time of high winds - and thus all the exposed dirt and dust and rubble, and the piles and piles of sand, readily become airborne. The weather is loveliest at this time of year; but the air quality tends to be the worst.)
The streets fill up with secret policemen.
(Beijing allegedly has a colossal number of policemen, more than twice as many as London or New York; but fully half of them are assigned to 'political duties' - i.e., spying on and harassing potential 'dissidents'. Many of them are humourless goons whose only job skill, evidently, is manhandling people into the backs of vans. Although they operate in 'plain clothes', the unsmiling visage, the buzzcut hairstyle, and even the incongruously brightly coloured polo shirt is very much 'uniform'. Lots of these guys skulking down at the bottom end of Wangfujing Street lately - wonder what that's all about? Spring, alas, is the peak season for the suppression of dissent. It used to be that we'd only get a major crackdown for a week or two either side of June 4th. But there are a number of other anniversaries connected with the 1989 Tiananmen protests strung through April and May, and several connected with discontent in Tibet in March; and, as the government here has become increasingly anxious and insecure in recent years, the level of 'precautionary' police activity at this time of year has ramped up enormously, and spread out over longer and longer periods. With the recent spate of popular uprisings across the Muslim world, the CCP leadership's anxieties have reached unprecedented levels. And the Buzzcut Brigade are out in force - on T-Square, around Wangfujing, everywhere.)
The Internet stops working.
(More directly bothersome for most of us than the proliferation of sinister goon squads on our streets is the Kafka Boys' annual attempt to strangle the Internet. The clampdown over the next couple of months is likely to be so over-the-top that even those of us using robust VPNs will suffer a significant loss of functionality in our Internet connection; the system gets so overloaded by all the filtering that at times it pretty much grinds to a halt.)
And a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of.... leaving.
(Yep, I'm really starting to think I've had enough of this shit. Even the blue skies and the sweetness of blossom in the air can't lighten my mood.)
2 comments:
I can't say it's annual, exactly, but yes -- I've noted the recurring thoughts which turn that way. It seems every year, though, that something comes along to keep you there. Suddenly I'm thinking of Danny Glover's Lethal Weapon schtick: I'm gettin' too old for this shit.
I have used that line often - more often, perhaps, over on The Barstool.
It seems that any reference to Danny Glover or Lethal Weapon gets you labelled as 'spam'. Strange.
Post a Comment