Deep Chill

Today is the coldest day in Beijing in 40 years — 15 mph wind atop a low of -4°F — following the heaviest snowfall since 1951. Many schools closed.

As noted before, the capital does not deal well with snow. Outside the city center, roads are not treated in any way: no plows, no salt, no sand. The streets look like something from backcountry Vermont. And since Beijing drivers have an inordinate fear of snow, only a handful of cars went past my apartment during the morning rush hour.

North Pole Must Be Too Cold

You can learn a lot by watching TV ads on the Beijing subway. For instance, Santa Claus lives in a temperate alpine valley, where he hand-selects chocolate chips to be mixed into a popular brand of ice cream.

Also, judging from cartoons that tout the Chinese emergency hotline, all criminals and crime victims in China are white foreigners.

Afternoon at the Old Summer Palace

Across the road from Tsinghua University is the Old Summer Palace, a large park with the ruins of several imperial palaces destroyed by British and French soldiers in 1860.

Obama

President Obama visited China this week. Little disruption in Beijing outside of the downtown area, where Obama discussed policy with President Hu and toured the Forbidden City.

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In response to a question on Twitter and the Chinese firewall at a Shanghai 'town-hall meeting,' Obama said he supported "non-censorship" but declined to criticize or even mention censorship by the Chinese government.

His carefully-worded answer came across as weak to many Americans, myself included. But since Obama did not criticize the government, his discussion of the role that Internet freedoms can play in a democracy made it into Chinese-language newspapers here.

Winter Arrives

The posting lull has ended.

Over the weekend I moved into an off-campus, three-bedroom apartment in the Wudaokou neighborhood of Beijing. I am living with the two guys with whom I visited Xinjiang. Arduous travel, including two 24-hour train rides in large-fridge-sized cabins, is a great way to determine roommate compatibility.

As the view out my window indicates, snow covers the capital. Thunder and lightning accompanied the storm that brought it last night.

The first snowfall of the season came on Halloween. That freak storm was boosted by the Beijing Weather Modification Office.

"We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," said Zhang Qiang, who is in charge of the office. Zhang said more than 16 million tonnes of snow had been artificially added according to the preliminary calculation.

Beijingers are pretty poor at driving in snow, walking on slippery sidewalks, and shoveling paths in a timely fashion. They are, however, adept at building snowmen.

Taste of Xinjiang

The arid, sunny climate in Xinjiang is ideal for growing grapes, melons, and pomegranates. Chinese families returning home from Urumqi during harvest season stock up on local fruits and nuts, boxes of which clog the luggage carousel at the Beijing airport.

Almost anything — from carpets to rice to plumbing fixtures — can be found at the Sunday Market in Kashgar. This stall was in the dried fruits and sweets section.

Hand-pulled laghman (拉面) noodles are served up in the market. Uighur laghman is usually cold and spicy, unlike the heated but milder laghman found in nearby Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

One of the guys I traveled with noted that the noodle-making process reminded him of Adam Smith's pin factory. One man did nothing but chop up lamb. Another pulled the noodles. Another prepared the sauces. The loudest and friendliest served as hawker and server. Older children, not yet ready for skilled labor, fetched ingredients.

Samsas (a distant cousin of Indian samosas) are salty baked pastries filled with meat and fat from a fat-tailed sheep, and seasoned with cumin and onions.

High Altitude

Karakul Lake and the 7,546-meter Muztagh Ata (Father of Ice Mountains), right off the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan in the Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang.

Some of the Kyrgyz shepherds in the area still live in traditional yurts, though the Chinese government promotes more permanent settlements (such as fixed concrete yurts).