The crowding and the pollution of Beijing are noticeable before your plane lands. As the plane starts to descend, the horizon never turns into a distinct line. Rather the blue-white haze that is seen at high elevation takes on a yellow-brown hue. The horizon never appears and the yellow-brown seems closer and closer as the smog gets thicker and thicker. Buildings, enormous boxes with windows, can be seen through the smog. Each of these look like they hold about 100 efficiency apartments and they are all ugly. In the states, they'd be unacceptable for low-income housing. Identical buildings are organized in blocks of eight or ten. For every block of these buildings there is an adjacent construction project dominated by a towering crane.

My cab ride to my host university brought me closer to the city center, where buildings looked less like boxes. However, this only meant that the cranes towered more and were as much of the skyline as the buildings. The ride was disastrous. I was dropped off at the wrong school and then had to hail another cab to get to the right place. When I was trying to get to the school and when I was checking in, many of my fears were realized. I really can't communicate at all in this language. I'm scared because this is going to be hard and there is no way out.