I recorded a couple of years ago that Beijing's "official definition" of the arrival of spring is a run of five consecutive days where the temperature rises above 10 degrees Celsius (seemingly without even a proviso about an absence of overnight frosts!). By that rather lax measure, 'spring' arrived last week, if not the week before.
In fact, using this criterion, spring usually arrives two or three times every year; and perhaps as many as four or five or six times in a particularly schizoid year.
Since last Thursday, it's turned COLD and wet again. On Saturday night it SNOWED quite heavily.
We'll have one or two more nights of sharp frost, and then things are supposed to be cheering up again. We should get our second 'spring' this weekend. I imagine there'll then be yet another little cold snap. Third spring might be the real one.
[I saw some blossoms on a tree beside the Sanlitun SOHO mall at the weekend. I could hardly believe my eyes! A closer look revealed that they were FAKE. I wish I'd had my camera on me to take a picture of it. No sign of real blossoms anywhere yet. Give it another week or two.]
2 comments:
Fake blossoms? I don't understand. Was it a real tree or did the bark have Made in China stamped somewhere?
I think it was a real tree, with fake blossoms.
It is a crazy country.
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