It's too soon to awaken from slumber

Spring Festival, in name at least, conjures up for this Westerner a hearkening to a warm, sunny world with carefree birds and budding branches. In February, even during this mild Beijing winter, that seems a distant prospect at best.

A stroll through the city's longest belt park, Yuan Dynasty Dadu City Wall Relics Park, is an apt reminder that winter's grip has not yet relented. Brown scrub grass greets a visitor's eyes, and then dreary stretches of bare, long-dormant trees. The canal running through the park is shallow and sluggish. Even the many statues seem unusually benumbed. Only the clusters of trusty evergreens convey that, despite the gloomy clutch of winter, life goes on.

I welcome the revolving seasons after two decades in Southern California, where sunshine and mild temperatures year-round make it difficult to answer with certainty when someone basking on the beach asks, "What did you do last summer?" Every week, every month, every year in sunny San Diego blends into the next, with no seasons to serve as ticks of the biological clock.