The Beijing accent, the exaggerated 儿 (“er”) sound at the end of every word, is music to my ears.

I should be sad because we’re leaving soon—to France, not Canada yet, phew!—but for now I’m just excited to be in Beijing again.

When we decided to go west, to Chongqing and Chengdu, we knew we would have to fly back. It’s okay. Tons of airlines fly to Beijing from Chengdu. Every Chinese province seems to have its own company—we booked our flight with Hainan Airlines.

At 10 a.m., we made our way to Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, a new addition that opened in 2021. Everything was very smooth and efficient… except for the slight obsession the Chinese authorities have with lighters.

You can’t fly with a lighter, even in your carry-on. You can’t fly with explosives and radioactive materials as well, which is more understandable, but lighters?

So when you check in your luggage, you have to wait for five minutes in front of a giant billboard where your name will show if a security issue with your luggage arises. Then you have to get your luggage, remove the forbidden items, and endure public humiliation in front of all the passengers (not sure about the last part, though).

There was an issue with Mr. or Mrs. Wang’s luggage. With Mr. or Mrs. Liang’s luggage as well.

Poor them. A lighter issue or a radioactive materials issue?

“It takes forever to type my entire name,” I told Feng. “Maybe we should wait for a few more minutes, just in case…”

Fortunately, our luggage checked out fine. Mind you, I did have a lighter in my backpack…

… but I had to throw the one in my carry-on.

No worries, a few metres further, in the airport’s smoking room, a communal cigarette lighter was provided.

The three-hour flight was smooth and we were even served a complete meal—fruits, yogurt, and Hainan chicken, my favourite! It’s a dish I make all the time in Canada. I gave mine to Feng. I wasn’t exactly hungry (yet), I was busy sleeping.

We landed in Beijing, rode the Capital Airport Express train, then the subway, and once again, we got off at Workers’ Stadium.

“Where is the other room?”

“There’s no other room, Mark. All three of us sleep here.”

Now that Mark is older, we try to book two-bedroom apartments. In Zhengzhou, we even booked two apartments because they were very cheap. But in Beijing, it’s hard to find bigger places… so yes, it’s the three of us in a small studio.

We will survive. Each one of us has annoying quirks—like, right now, it’s 1 a.m. and I’m typing this in bed while Feng is snoring and Mark isn’t sleeping yet because he spent the last four hours playing games on both the tablet and the phone.

We took a last look at the room and, suddenly energized, we decided to climb Jingshan, the hill with the best views of the Forbidden City.

Then I felt the need to cross the city to go back to a great noodle place I discovered last year, somewhere between Chaoyangmen and Jianguomen.

“Can you find it?” Feng asked. “It may not even be there anymore…”

“I’ll find it, don’t worry.”

“Okay, I’m heading to Sanlitun with Mark. It’s almost 10 p.m., last chance to get something to eat.”

I found my noodle joint, ordered my favourite, texted Feng, took the subway back and we met again at Workers’ Stadium station.

Beijing is giving me energy I didn’t even know I had.