And so it is. We find ourselves back in Beijing, land of giant things. Big blocks, big buildings, big roads, big dust.

We’ve spent the past ten days with Andrew’s sister, Isabelle, and Jasper and Dom, two other friends from home. It’s been a whirlwind of markets and meals and outings and long, fiercely contested games of Five Hundred (one of which was conducted in a small sleeper compartment onboard a train with a Chinese bunkmate who slumbered through the entire battle, waking only when one of us managed to accidentally massage his rump …).

The three of them left today, and I am missing them already.

Half our time with those guys was spent in Shanghai, the other half in Beijing. Despite being China’s two premier cities, the vibe in each is remarkably different. Shanghai somehow conveys that it expects to be loved. Beijing, by contrast, simply knows that it is important. No further effort need be made.

In a way, I prefer the latter. Shanghai can come across like a high-maintenance glamourpuss – all flirty style and edge, but with a self-indulgent streak that’s difficult to handle. The waterfront strip along the Bund is undeniably impressive, but it’s knowingly pretentious at the same time. Myriad trendy bars and achingly expensive restaurants have sprouted in the dim-lit corridors of the European buildings here. It’s lovely, perhaps, but it reminds me why I don’t tend to care for such places. Hard surfaces and expensive tipples and sad-faced people smiling until it hurts. The usual Asia expat scene unfolds: white guys wearing pleated pants and high-tucked business shirts cruise Chinese women wearing heels as high as houses. Drinks cost more than we sometimes spend in a day. Red plastic designer lamps made to look like chandeliers cast a bloody, devil-like pallor over all of us.

Beijing thumbs its nose at such frivolities, it seems. The squat, unyielding buildings give nothing away, and the enormous freeways and boulevards groan under the weight of political might. Traditional courtyard homes are razed in the blink of an eye, and beggars and the rural poor are sleeping rough in pedestrian tunnels. Just streets away, a young woman wearing impeccably fashionable clothes brushes past us, and I see that in addition to her Shiseido-perfect makeup, she has miniature silver balls threaded onto each and every eyelash. Another woman staggers by carrying a large green box labelled ‘Inside Oral Sucking Tablet’.

In the fancy part of town near Sanlitun, I can’t help but notice that the old ‘Friendship Store’ (formerly the only place in town to get imported items, and at that time kept strictly off-limits to everyday Chinese) has been taken over by a Subway fast-food joint. Everywhere, everywhere, there are building works, and a state of permanent feverishness about the impending Olympics hangs in the smoggy air.

Beijing is not an easy city, nor is it a tranquil haven, but at the moment I prefer it to the seductive china-doll aesthetic of Shanghai.

Us, sporting non-Mao haircuts, in front of the Forbidden City in downtown Beijing