Beijing. Spring Festival lately over and the Premier sitting in Politburo. Expectant February weather. As much gridlock in the streets as if Henry Ford had lately died and, Caesar-like, willed a car to every unlicensed driver in the city, so that it would not be wonderful to see one of his original factory models trundling on in a generational trip around the fourth Ring Road. Firecracker shards swirling red in the streets, whispering acridly of past glory, as they drift into the curbs, drift into the walls. Trash trucks piled impossibly with cardboard. Equally unsteady trash tricycles piloted by stone faces. Bicycles, pouring unchecked across the intersection, and generally infected with the mood of the cars, ringing bells and cutting each other off where thousands have been cut off since the day broke. Honking, honking of black Audis, honking of taxis, honking of buses, each conveyance making protest before submitting to its place in the natural hierarchy.

Smog everywhere. Smog down on Houhai, where it drifts alongside the sleeping red lanterns; smog wrapping the Forbidden City, where it protects the palace like a bauble in its woolly gauze. Smog in the Bird’s Nest, smog around the Egg, smog tickling the nether regions of the Pants. Smog strolling genially out into Hebei to give the farmers a whiff of civilization. Smog buoying the flag up the pole in Tiananmen. Smog in the throats of ancient pensioners silently practicing tai chi in Chaoyang Park; smog in the bleary eyes of migrant workers heading to the construction site. Chance faces pressed against office windows, peeping into a sky of smog and searching out landmarks in the aether, as if sailing though it to some unknown harbor.