The Smell

The first thing, overwhelmingly, was the smell. Like no other place on earth. Sulfur dioxide. The robust smell of bad eggs and coal. The plane pushed through a blanket of it. The night lights made the pall glow greenish brown. The haze continued inside the airport. I couldn't make out the end of the turnstiles in the baggage claim hall. It smells like this place, and this place only.
I was stunned by its power to evoke memories, of disorientation, of adventure, of complete loneliness. I had to stay still for a while to let the feelings pass.
Smell was first, then light. An orange city, made more luminous by the sulfur fumes. Skin turns sepia in the wash. There's less light. There's less colour information to work with. Whole spectra have been rubbed out.
Jenny and Yoni met me at the airport and we yelled and bantered loudly when I finally emerged.
"He's got long hair," Jenny said.
"I told you he would," Yoni said.
"So you did. He's a bit skinny," said Jenny.
"Oh he's back!" Yoni said.
"It's been so clear these last couple of days, and now it's all stinky," Jenny said. "Welcome home".
Time, however, feels concertinaed, like I've never left.
We catch up in the cab back to Yong He Gong, shrouded in fog, and finally into the old neighbourhood of Jiaodaokou, and our piece of Beijing, perched high in a grey apartment farm.
I'd forgotten other things too. How Yoni is the one man in the world who can skip a whole taxi rank of travellers and walk straight up to a cab and demand to be taken somewhere, and yell if not attended to. I'd forgotten what swearing loudly and talking about sex in the back of a taxi, driver oblivious, feels like. I'd forgotten how very bad the driving is in this neck of the woods - and not just bad in a technical sense, actually scary too. My nerves had been clearly enjoying subtler moods since leaving China, and took fright. I'd forgotten how shabby the nice places are, and how really shabby the shabby places are. I'd forgotten the mild chaos that ends up permeating your speech and attitudes. It's a madness so comfortable. I'd forgotten how cheap our landlord used to be (the long-awaited improvements to the bathroom consist of a poorly adhered shower curtain rail which still does little to keep in all the water). Earlier in my trip here today, other things too: snooty protective foreigners (as if China is theirs and theirs only) not taking the help of another foreigner, flirty customs girls triple checking my passport photo for the sheer eye-contact of it all; overtly friendly boys sitting next to me on the plane, instant "friends"; Watsons brand water. Thrillingly familiar.
It does feel like a home, this Beijing. The smell of this apartment in particular - so formative, so important, so scary, it's all coming back. My friends are here. And this smell won't leave me alone. I want to suck it in for these first few hours of grace, when my memory tanks are still firing strong and meaningful feelings back into my system, before it stops registering again.
I remember coming to this apartment the first time in the freezing cold. It would have only been a few months before this time of the year too. Unloading and starting a new life in Beijing, after a very lonely and isolating previous 6 months. I remember the release. It's the release I feel now. And also a lot of the love that fills this place: the empty dishes waiting for ai yi, the sour smell of the kitchen, the archaeological layers left by previous housemates, the baubles still attached to the staircase from Chloe two whole Christmasses ago, the way Yoni occupies a space and commands it ever so gently, and wisely and with humour. It's good to be back.
This morning, the third impression: in the form of a headache. Dehydration. Everything is so dry.

Facts for today: It took half an hour to collect my bags.
It costs 81 kuai to get from the airport to Jiaodaokou.
The earthquake recently took out a major broadband internet connection to the rest of the world. The connection is still noticeably slow. Amazing it's all so reliant on fixed lines, and infrastructure that to end-users are so invisible, and not at all a part of how we conceive of the internet.