I heart Jing Jing

Silly, silly me. I thought I’d be able to log onto WordPress from Beijing and update my blog. But it’s blocked and I can’t. All of the blog hosting sites are blocked, in fact. So you are reading this through the generosity of Mr. Iheartjingjing, who has agreed to post the posts I email to him. He’s in the Midwest hanging out with Evangelicals who spread the Good News using magic, so this is all feeling very fragmentary and postmodern! As for Beijing, it’s pretty much as I expected so far: hot, smoggy, smelling of burnt car tires. Feels like home. The skies are a pale blue, not bad but not the bright blue I was expecting with the Olympics in a month. FF said it rained for two days straight last week, so they must be seeding the clouds already and they are starting the odd-even number driving regulations next week. I didn’t get to fly into the amazing new Norman Foster airport, which was a disappointment. I saw it from the outside driving away, alongside the old Soviet-style airport I flew into just 10 years ago. Madness!

FF and I live in a ‘luxury-style’ apartment building with a doorman and an elevator, a far cry from the bare concrete buildings we used to live in. The arched gate to the complex is a giant baroque monstrosity carved with huge Roman guards. I used to see FF basically everyday when I lived in Beijing but she now lives in London and we haven’t seen each other in two years. It feels like an incredible treat to be living together for a few months. Our apartment is on the 10th floor and out my bedroom window I can see the abandoned shells of two high-rise buildings surrounded by a construction site – the construction has been temporarily halted for the Olympics, I think, though a few big-bellied, bare-chested men still strut around the site, as they will. There’s a dog down there too. And beyond the construction site is a golf course!! I’ve come back to the city a few times since I moved away, so the changes get less shocking each time. I am supposed to call the network and go in to see them, but I am procrastinating from doing so. There are backs that need massaging, hair that needs cutting, bikes that need to be bought, and an old friend to catch up with…