Doused With Chinese Water

Getting sleepy here over Alaska.  It’s been a good run on this plane of outstanding reading and hours of writing.  My last yawn had long tendrils.  I need to calculate the time to see how long we have.  About three-and-a-half hours more to go.  Perhaps a nap would be good.  I’ve another day to account for, jumping the dateline the way I am here.  But perhaps the fresh images of Beijing after a good three weeks away will be the more interesting thing to capture beyond the ninth hour of sitting, here in seat 24G.

Landed.  The air is crisp but not cold.  The air has some particulate silt but I can see the mountains in the distance.  It is by any reasonable estimation a lovely clear winter day not unlike the days I was enjoying back in New York.  I’d expected to see my little one there, when I cleared customs.  She asked for and was given a lovely world map by my mom.  She forgot it in the car when she left and asked for my help.  We miraculously found it the moment I was leaving and I managed to leave it behind on Metro North.  So I ordered another map.  But I went through Amazon rather than Urban Outfitters, which is where she’d originally sent people.  Well . . . it will likely look the same exact it turned out to be three times the size.  I lumbered through customs with it expecting that she be very curious as to what I was carrying.

Managed to get it all in a cab.  The gentleman has been gentlemanly thus far.  I made some small talk about the weather.  The weather’s not bad.  Beijing can get starkly cold, but we aren’t there now.  This is probably only a few degrees colder than San Francisco where I expected the afternoon sun to burn things off and it never did. 

Tianbei Lu now.  I’m trying to savor the little piece of familiarity that come with reentry to something especially familiar.  It’s pleasant and normal to be surrounded with Chinese faces suddenly.  There are assortments of muscles that have been at rest for the last three weeks.  Tapped upon, doused with Chinese water, they spring open like flowers under time lapse photography.  It’s still sunset.  My laptop hasn’t adjusted yet but if I do the math it is coming up on 5:00PM.  Almost time for some proper Chinese food this evening for dinner.