More than just thick smog? Beijing in winter

As someone from the south, I’ve never truly experienced all four seasons—winter was only slightly colder when cold fronts hit. I’d heard that winters in northern Europe could bring on depression, but I always thought that was just a legend. The weather can affect one’s mood. When I was in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where it felt like summer all year round, I didn’t really notice...BeijingFor two years, whenever winter arrived and the gray, foggy sky rolled in, the moment I opened the curtains in the morning, it seemed to set the tone for the entire day.

But now that I’m back in a southern city, whenever I think back to my time inBeijing, it’s always winter that comes to mind first. I still remember my first winter at Tsinghua University—the teachers would assign male students to shovel snow outside the campus. Back then, I found it novel and fun. Winter at Tsinghua was most beautiful when the lotus pond was frozen solid. There were always enterprising locals setting up stalls to rent ice skates, letting people skate on the lake. But the campus security, worried about accidents, ran themselves ragged trying to stop people from skating. They’d warn the students on the west side, only for the mischievous ones on the east side to sneak out anyway. The School of Journalism and Communication is housed in a European-style mansion. On snowy days, the two rime-covered trees in front of its gate looked even more solemn and mysterious—like a scene straight out of Beauty and the Beast.

Photo by Tiger Y

Even when it’s not a smoggy day,Beijingin winter is still dull and gray. The trees are bare, the ground is covered in dust, and the clothes people wear are mostly gray or blue—there’s little color. When you visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, everything is made up of square-shaped buildings. The dark red walls paired with mustard-yellow eaves—I almost always visited on smoggy days. The murky, sooty air pressed heavily down on everyone, and pedestrians hurried along, pulling their scarves over their mouths and noses, or foreign tourists wearing exaggerated iron-gray gas masks, walking quickly with their heads down. This only added to the solemn aura of Tiananmen. The whole city felt weighed down. It reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons where an invisible dome covered the city. People didn’t try to escape but simply continued living their lives beneath it. InBeijing’s winter smog, that’s exactly how I felt.

But now that I’m back in Taiwan, I find myself missingBeijingin all its seasons. Even though I once struggled to adapt to the bitter cold of the northern winter, every spring when the flowers bloomed, I experienced the magical way my mood shifted with the seasons—as if I’d climbed out of a deep valley into paradise. Finally, I got to taste the sweet fruit that comes after hardship. The sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors on my tongue felt magnified a thousandfold in my heart. But through this process, my willpower grew stronger.

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