Bracing for the season's blood, sweat and tears

When I arrived in Beijing last winter, my nose bled and throat hurt every day for two weeks.

"The air is probably too dry for a southerner like yourself," many colleagues would tell me. "It's your body adjusting and you'll get used to it soon enough," one of them cooed.

Sure enough, a year on, I no longer blow or cough up blood-streaked phlegm into tissues. As the cold settles firmly onto the capital this year, I have even found the heavy air in the evenings - tinged with the smoke from the coal-fired boilers that help warm the city - strangely alluring.

Just imagine walking on the ethereal grounds of the Imperial Palace with its mustard-colored eaves lightly dusted from the first snowfall, against a gray sky filled with the season's particulates - perfect. Or consider the red sunsets bestowed upon Beijing that add to the melancholy of the northern plains during the long wintry months. How else would these picture-postcard moments be possible without the soot of surrounding industry and sand of encroaching deserts?

Developing such a liking for the haze during this time of the year is only one example of how impressive the human body is at adapting to the environment. My colleagues further insist that the annual flu bug making its way round the office now is actually the body's way of adjusting to the changing seasons. It is another excellent example of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Feeling feverish? Crawl under a pile of blankets to sweat it out through the night and feel like a new person by morning. Better still, beef up the body's evolving immunity with a flu shot or decoction of time-honored herbs and you are ready for whatever ever-morphing microorganism the world is going to throw at you.

The same can probably be said of the capital's culinary delights. The first time I visited the popular restaurants lining Beijing's "Gui Jie" or Ghost Street, even a spice-lover like myself found the dishes drenched in chili oil challenging. Now I know better. Swig a flask of baijiu, Chinese liquor, as a fiery aperitif to coat your stomach and you can actually develop a taste for mouth-watering, tear-inducing offerings like "ma la tang" offal stew or spicy crayfish. The local spirit will also guard against any possible upsets from the crustacean delicacy, infamous at one time for fattening up on waste.

"Yi du gong du" or "fight poison with poison", as they say.

It will be interesting to see just how much my body can take. A recent weekend trip to Guanting reservoir in the outskirts of Beijing reminded me of the curative effects of clean and green. Flocks of swans flew against an azure sky, as a constant breeze blew over the deep blue waters of the reed-fringed lake. The faint drone of a row of newly erected wind turbines could also be heard in the distance. Amazing what a little fresh air can do.