Beijing, Beijing. I love you, but more and more these days, I’m scared that Europe and Beijing, with their powers combined, are going to turn me into that secret of all secrets, that hypocrite of all hypocrites, that cretin of all cretins!: the “I only smoke when I’m a little bit tipsy/little bit stressed/little bit shocked/little bit just-feel-like-it.. but no, I don’t smoke” smoker.

Reasons:

1. Shisha is nice

- I like apple and cinnamon the best.

2. Chick cigarettes smell and taste nice

- I blame Europe for this.

3. Breathing the air in most Beijing night-life establishments is second-hand-smoking so much second-hand-smoke anyway, you might as well first-hand it if you kind of like the experience

- The other day at Mao Livehouse, a place that has live bands every night except Mondays, I walked in and Imy throat literally instantly tightened up and I had trouble breathing.. then I got used to it and the outside night air later felt curiously light and empty.

4. The Beijing pollution wrecks your lungs anyway.

- I know, I know, pollution ain’t the same as tobacco but the effects sometimes feel the same - e.g. the well-known affliction I think of as Lao Wai Sore Throat, where foreigners get a sore throat from the pollution within 1-2 weeks of moving to Beijing. I had mine 1.5 weeks in.

- Lao: old. Wai: foreign. Old slang for foreigners, used because they look so much older than they are (to the perpetually fresh-faced Chinese)

Ugh, last Friday, the pollution was the worst. Imagine the air above a dusty Australian country road after a couple four-wheel-drives have trundled over it, then apply that to ALL OF THE SKYLINE.. AND the trees 10m in front of you. I read in Lonely Planet that breathing the air in Beijing for one day is sometimes equivalent to smoking 70 cigarettes per day or something ridiculous like that, and I’m starting to believe it.

Anyway, I will hold out as long as I can! I don’t want to smoke. But deep down, the reasons, they do exist..