Ever since two weeks after we got here, our professors have been saying that spring has arrived. When it was snowing outside, I definitely did not believe them. However, as the semester continued, Beijing gradually started to look alive. Almost all the trees have leaves again, and flowers of all kinds have been blooming all over the place.
Usually, spring in Beijing means hellish sandstorms. I asked my tutor about them, and she said just last year she remembers a time when she looked outside and all she saw was the yellow sand. Pretty intense. Somehow, we seem to have missed this strange weather pattern. I have yet to experience the infamous Beijing sandstorms (I’m definitely not complaining about that). It has been windy, but fortunately not enough to fill the air with sand from Inner Mongolia.
I feel that Beijing’s weather also deserves a mention. One thing you can’t avoid talking about here is the pollution. I think it can be summed up by this story: my study abroad advisor from Notre Dame is from Beijing, and she said until she came to the U.S. she honestly thought the sky was grey. The big thing about the pollution levels is that it really does change every day. Some days I wake up and feel fine, and other days I wake up and hardly want to breathe the air. Some days you can see the mountains to the west of us, and some days you can’t. Some days you can tell where the sun is, and other days the sky is light but you can just barely discern that the vaguely shining orb in the sky is in fact the sun, and other days you can only just feel the sun’s presence. There will be those who tell us it’s just fog, but we know better. It’s pollution. Most of the other students here also have the “Beijing Lung”, a wheezy cough that never really goes away. I’m convinced the wheeze is what first gave me bronchitis.
Other than the pollution levels, I think Beijing’s weather is a lot like St. Louis’. If you don’t like it, wait 10 minutes—it will change. It has been gradually getting warmer, but periods of comfortable temperatures are always interrupted by days of cold or rain. Now it is starting to get actually consistently warm, which means all the foreign students are donning their t-shirts and shorts. The Chinese remain in their sweaters, jackets and long pants. I don’t know how they do it, but they seem just as confused by me. Every time I wear shorts (even Bermuda shorts), inevitably at least one Chinese person will ask me how I am not freezing cold (meanwhile, I have no idea how they are not sweating their brains out). Even in 80 degree weather, they still dress as if it were late autumn. As if we foreigners weren’t easy enough to spot already. On top of possibly blond hair and blue eyes, add our different clothing habits, and you’ve got a sure fire way to recognize a fellow foreigner from across the quad.
Before I came, I heard from other Notre Dame study abroad students that Peking University’s campus was a lot like Notre Dame’s: lots of old trees, a lake, and obsessive compulsive groundskeepers. When I arrived and everything looked dead and depressing, I wasn’t really seeing the beauty in the campus. However, now that everything is green and blooming, PKU is definitely starting to look like the garden I heard it described as.
Side note: the lake in the photos is called未名湖, (Wei Ming Hu), and it is on PKU's campus.
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