As I returned back to Beijing yesterday, winter awaited me. For all of its roughness, there is something beautiful about a cold Chinese winter. Every trip to the store or subway, restaurant or market, is a fight against the whipping winds, and its cool dry air.

Across the country the sickeningly sweet smell of burning coal wafts through the cities, and even in the countryside. It is an odor that should be unpleasant, but that I somehow have come to find familiar and comforting. It reminds me of my first days in China, six years ago, and the wonder and excitement that they held.

As good as hot pot is in the summer, sitting out on the urban landscape, eating tasty morsels with a cold bottle of beer, it is truly ideal for the winter. Coming from the cold outside into the steamy confines of a local restaurant is a wonderful reprieve from the fight with nature’s difficult elements.

China’s winters are a cold snaking path building inevitably to the excitement of Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). In Beijing the city dries up to near-desert conditions, often not seeing a single drop of rain or snow for entire months. Shorts give way to long johns, and smaller restaurants stop carrying cold beer.

In recent years wealthy businessmen have wisely begun leaving Beijing and other cities in the northeast for the warm confines of Bangkok. Only when the winds have warmed, and the tourists have begun flowing back into the Forbidden City and across the Great Wall do they return to the Chinese cities. The only foreigners left in Beijing during January are those whose jobs force them to stay, or those who like to brave the elements.

These are the cold, crisp days ahead, where any morning can bring a sky of thick pollution that will make you regret living here, or a clear blue overhead that looks as bone-chilling as it feels. Summer leaves you sweating, drenched in your own wet shirt. But winter is a fight against the forces of China’s weather. It has not arrived yet, but the chill that greeted me at the airport has prepared me for the fight ahead.

For a take on how lack of heating changes the perception of winter in southern China, please check out the latest post on my new blog Cup of Cha.