Yammin'

It's cold in Beijing. Everyday the temperature hovers above freezing so that you just kinda wish it'd freeze already. Thankfully, my apartment has heating now, but when you're walking around Beijing your breath always floats a few feet in front of your eyes and everyone has that winter chin tuck that you only really know about if you're from a cold place. It's kind of like Boston.

But Beijing knows how to do cold better than Boston. On almost every block there's a tam vendor. He has this iron barrel on the back of his three-wheeled bike thing, and uses it as a roaster of sorts. He parks (probably illegally) by the sidewalk and warms the vicinity with the toasted aroma of yams. There's a lot of things to smell in Beijing, not many of them pleasant, but I think we all know that the smell of roasting yams on a cold winter day is three steps away from heaven but two away from gluttony. This is the smell that every Advent season should be saturated with. Lysol should makes this scent. New car smell? Forget it.

And the best is in those precious moments when the Yam man (or woman) bikes past with her portable roaster and the smell graces the olfactory senses for a brief but all the more warming moment.