When I first came to China many moons ago, my Chinese students would always tell me that "the weather is very changeable" in China. I knew what they meant, and although there is nothing grammatically incorrect about that sentence, it still always struck me as an odd construction.
Odd as it may be, however, it’s a very apt description of the weather here in Beijing the past 3 days. Thursday night, I checked Yahoo! Weather, and they were listing the current conditions as "smoke." It was accurate. Friday morning we awoke to our first spring dust storm. The sky was yellowish red, and dirt was blowing around everywhere. The dirt just becomes part of the air. It’s disgusting. This went on most of the day, ushering in the perverbial cold front from Siberia (just to the north of here). Saturday the temps continued to plummet, and by mid-day giant snowflakes were falling, thick and heavy! That lasted about 30 minutes, then the sun came out and we enjoyed brilliant blue skies! Like they say, the weather is very changeable in Beijing. First smoke, then dust, then snow! Gotta love it!