Last week I was a guest on Sinica Podcast, the world’s longest-running English-language podcast about China. Kaiser Y Kuo, who previously spent two decades in Beijing, was visiting the city for the first time since 2019. He had some evocative, fully poetic things to say about this place.

“The love and loathing are always there. They’re always present. But somehow the love, for those of us who devote ourselves to this, the love wins out. I’m not sure how sometimes. But everything that’s ever been written about Beijing that truly resonates has those features. It’s candid. It’s brutal about the stark ugliness of the place sometimes, but also [has] those genuinely inspiring characters. It centers the people.”

Have a listen: