Beijing: A New Smell

The first thing is always the smell.  The new smell of a new country when you step off the plane.  Beijing air hung over us like a wet rag.  Even in the glisten and gleam of Beijing’s international airport, there’s a rotting, mildewy smell that seems to steam up from the ground.  It’s this oldness, dampness, wetness that creeps over the city, as much as they try to cover it in glass and steel.  Glittering Beijing is sweating.

We arrived exhausted and confused.  In a country emerging as one of the world’s great superpowers, it is surprising (and a trifle disconcerting) that so few people speak English.  It took us a surprisingly long time to find an English-speaking taxi driver at the airport.  But we finally found one with nominal English skills, and he whisked us off to Old Beijing.

The “hutong” area of Beijing is the old city, thronged with bicycles, vendors, and old men playing mah jong on the street.  The taxi driver dropped us off at the end of Nanluogo Xiang and told us to walk.  A tiny woman appeared out of nowhere, and came running at us, struggling to pronounce my name.  There were smiles of relief on all sides as she led us to our hotel, down a street barely wider than the stretched arms of a man!

This mini hutong became our own little moldy corner of the world.  The courtyard was a burst of life: green plants and tendrilly things hanging from every crevice; a swirl of goldfish on the floor; a Mandarin-speaking Macau; a naughty little black dog that always tried to sneak into our room.  At all moments of the day were the sounds of squawking, chirping, and yipping.  Our room was an odd little 2-level, with a mattress on the floor at the top of a steep flight of stairs and under a sloping roof.  The room became a sanctuary from the frenetic crush of people outside the hutongs.

Moments after we arrived, I fell into that mattress and dreamt of creeping things, wrapping their green fingers around me, and swallowing me up into the Beijing night.