Life can change as fast as the weather

It was early October or mid-to-late September in 2010, and I was looking for a job. I lived in San Diego, California, a southern city on the Pacific coast known for its year-round sunny skies and temperate climate.

San Diego is such a pleasant place to be that the cost of living there soars beyond imagination－the locals call it the "luxury tax", and the luxury, of course, is living there under whatever circumstances you can afford.

The source of all that luxury in San Diego is the weather. Temperatures rarely fall below 7 C nor climb above 30 C－and if they do, the sea breeze intervenes－but generally hover in the daytime around 25.

I had to laugh about the newspaper I had been working at for having a weather reporter. What was there to report? Almost every day was warm and sunny.

But that newspaper, like most in the United States, was drastically downsizing, and I was among the many who had to leave.

So in early autumn 2010, I applied for a job at China Daily in Beijing, and I was fortunate enough to get a letter back with a job offer.

It would be hard to leave San Diego, but I was excited at the opportunity to live in Beijing, and, particularly, to raise my boys there, to introduce them to a new culture. When I told them about it, I remember the younger of the two objecting, "But Dad, it's halfway around the world!"

I made light of it, answering, "You know, that's what they say about us too", but I knew it would be an unimaginably huge transition for them.

We looked at photos online, read about the customs, the country, the food, trying to learn whatever we could.

One thing we talked about, because the boys had lived mostly in warm climates, was what winter would be like. I told them about how much fun I had in the winters 0f my childhood in Massachusetts－making snowmen, building snow forts and having snowball fights, sledding and ice-skating.

I expected winters in Beijing to be like those I remembered from growing up in the outskirts of Boston.

I arrived in China in November, and my wife followed with the boys in December, plenty of time before Spring Festival to see what winter was like.

My expectations about winter only partially panned out. No snow to speak of, certainly not the repeated 15 to 30 centimeter snowfalls I remembered. So the snowmen, snow forts and snowballs were definitely out.

But our first two winters here were sunny and cold, so cold, in fact, that the body of water behind the nearby Bird's Nest National Stadium froze over.

It was a fantastic scene. People were skating, walking around on the ice, even sitting on little ice sleds pushing themselves forward with handheld rods. I had never seen those anywhere except in 17th-century Dutch paintings.

We had a great time those first two winters, and the fun we had on the ice went a long way toward helping the boys adjust.

What happened, though? Winter has lost much of its charm in Beijing. Sure, there might be a sudden cold snap for a few days with bright sunny skies. But for the most part, the weather is gray, somewhat smoggy and well above freezing.

Were those first two years a fluke, and this is the norm?

You never can tell with the weather. Last week, I read that a storm dumped up to 90 centimeters of snow just 225 kilometers north of San Diego in the town of Mountain High.