The smell of spring is in the air. Yes, it's pollen season again. On balmy nights the air is almost sticky sweet and oh-so-nauseating.

I just read Thom's lengthy waxing on the glories of Hong Kong and the golden, sepia-tinted memories of his childhood.

It made me think of growing up in China.

I think everything was more beautiful then. Everything was a greater glory and a deeper mystery. The sun shone brighter, the people smiled wider, the birds sang sweeter. Perhaps the sky was more blue and the rain rained wetter.

Think of all the BBC adaptations of Austen's novels. The greenery. The countryside. That's how I remember feeling about the place I grew up. Not so wild and empty, perhaps, but still with that pristine and natural glow around the edges. I remember scooping frog spawn from the pond and the two pagodas that sat in it, reachable by wide, flat tops of stone pillars in the water. There were rock gardens and the fiery red Japanese maples that grew gnarly towards the water. These are almost scenes from period dramas, the way I remember them.

I remember climbing in and out of neighbours' gardens with my friend through the broken pillars of their fence. Stealing sunflowers for to harvest and plant their seeds with dreams of cultivating my own crop the next summer. I caught brilliant red, orange and yellow ladybugs and pried open their shells to see their translucent, black wings and dropped them in the middle of the wide cups of poppies. I watched and stalked preying mantises and snuck up on butterflies and snapped them shut in a book. I ate the strawberries that dotted the ground and painted my face with the crushed leaves of a plant I would no longer recognise.

When it rained I sat on the sofa and looked out the window as the sand from the rooftops were washed off by the pouring water. My Grandmother watches a period drama and knits. My Grandfather has quietly dozed off only to wake up for the relevant plot points. I eat Go-shaped egg biscuits and wait for it to rain so much that it floods. I go exploring in the house and try (again) to find the hidden compartment to the massive redwood wardrobe--the only remnant of our affluent days before the Cultural Revolution. The wood smells sweet and paper is yellowed and translucent and glossy. Workbooks of sums and English even before I was five. A kite behind the door. Brown glasses of cod liver oil pellets. A book of flattened butterflies.

I climbed the willows that drooped into the pond and listened to the cicadas as my Grandmother smacked her mop against the banks. I walked under an arched walkway of climbing laburnums so heavy and thick with flower that you could barely see out. I skipped pebbles off lilypads to see if I could dislodge frogs and watched the lily flowers grow from the mud, bloom and then into seed.

I went back in the year of the heavy snowfall. It's different now. Things change. Everyone is looking forward and moving with progress and such perfect, sepia-tinted memories of childhood are left behind.