Well it’s warming up over here in Beijing with temperatures reaching the mid-teens pretty easily now during the day. Smog hasn’t been too much of a problem as of late and was odd when it did actually happen. Sadly, the weather was great throughout the week and then towards Friday and Saturday the smog settled in. There has been a faint whiff of coat dust in the air but not much. This “Beijing Blue” is probably a combination of shutting down coal mines and, more importantly, the end of “central heating”. This past week, on about Wednesday, I noticed my toes were getting colder on the bare floor a lot faster than they were during the winter. It turns out that the powers that ben have declared it warm enough outside to shut off the hot water that heats our apartments. So, with that, it’s official spring.
The flowers have started to blossom and I think the cherry blossoms will be appearing soon, if they haven’t already. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in season despite having spent so much time in Asia around this time of year.
And with the change of weather two thoughts enter to mind: first, what will i do this summer vacation? Second, will I be coming back next year? The second thought is always a concern when one lives on a contract-by-contract basis. The first thought, however, I have already mentioned before that I was thinking of heading back to Canada for the summer. But then the question becomes, for what? Anyway, it’s still a few months away before a decision needs to be made so I have some time to think.
Easter is coming up in the Western world while here in China the next holiday / religious-type day is the Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. It’s not so much a festival as it is a day to go to one’s ancestors’ graves, pay respects, and tidy up the tombstone, etc. Now, with China and its people having such an illustrious and lengthy history, one might think that they’re going to ancient burial sites to pay their respects. In reality, it seems enough to go to one’s grandparents and great grandparents’ graves. Surprisingly, Qingming was only made a holiday in Mainland China in 2008. I suspect this tradition is much more prominent in the rural areas than here in Beijing. I found it interesting that the willow branch is used to ward off evil spirits, whereas in the Ukrainian Catholic Church the willow is used on Palm Sunday to mark Jesus’ peaceful entrance into Jerusalem (which occurs the week before Easter; this year it is on Sunday, March 20).
In addition to the Qingming Festival, later, in May, is the Chinese Labour Day which is another 3-4 day weekend. All this serves is to make this semester a little bit easier than the first semester in which all of the holidays happen at the beginning of semester and then leave us with three straight months of classes. I’ve never appreciated a long-weekend until I didn’t have any!
And here I’ve reached the end of the post and, sadly, yet again, there are no pictures. I will do my best to remedy this. Worse still, it seems that my VPN has stopped working on my phone and so now I can’t connect to Instagram to post anything. Anyway, there are quite a few pics over there on my Instagram feed if you really want to take a look.