London or Beijing, the topic’s the same – the weather_美文

London or Beijing, the topic’s the same – the weather

Forget for a moment if you will, talk of Brexit, a golden era, trade deals and tourism. There’s one thing that always binds Britons and Chinese, and that’s fascination about the weather.

It’s a standing joke that if you get two or more Britons together on a train journey or in a pub, they’ll end up talking about the weather. Like the woeful performance of the England soccer team, it’s a safe subject that anyone can talk about.

I’ll bet it’s the same in China, especially at present, with torrential downpours flooding the streets of Beijing. Whilst we Britons bask in – for us – abnormally high temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius, folks in the Chinese capital are photographed pushing their cars through thigh-deep floods, riding bicycles along inundated streets, and watching as buses throw up a bow-wave worthy of a speeding ship.

Right now here in London the newspapers, tired of running story after story about EU negotiations, new governments, terror attacks and other major sagas, have eagerly jumped on the chance to run the usual hackneyed photographs of office workers soaking up the sun in central London’s many parks, of kids jumping in and out of the sea, pretty girls in bikinis and for the tabloids, the opportunity to use the word ``sizzles’’ in every front page headline.