It’s that sore feeling you get in the back of your throat, when you puff on a mangled Hong Mei cigarette you found stashed in a pocket of a jacket you haven’t washed for years, and recall the apocalyptic vision of a dirty-orange sun straining through the smog. Like a portkey, the taste transports you to a narrow back-alley of a hutong in west Beijing, where you used to hang out late at night, drinking 2-kuai Tsingtao beers and sucking on 1-kuai chuanr (various barely identifiable chunks of meat on a stick). You realize that that sore feeling has nothing to do with the cigarette’s excessive tar content. Oh Zhongguo. Tian tian wo xuyao ni ai.
