Back in Beijing
April 22nd, 2006
I returned to Beijing last night.
Thank GOD. I have never been so thankful to return to a place in my life.
Words cannot really describe the last week spent in Shanxi Province. Most of it ranged from polluted to uncomfortable to utterly absurd. Things like… scratching the top of my head and having my fingernails turn black from the coal dust… Or drinking fen jiu (the local liquor that smells and probably tastes an awful lot like rubbing alcohol) with Communist party officials… being mobbed by small schoolchildren asking for autographs… eating three Chinese banquets in four days… or having a random man off the street walk uninvited into my hotel room because he wanted to see some foreigners. I felt like an alien/celebrity, and not in a good way.
Walking around Beijing today, Gobi desert grit has never tasted so good between my teeth.
