Autumn in Washington

"So this is the northern autumn described as 'coming so quietly, so subtly' in Autumn in the Old Capital," I thought, standing on the Capitol Hill steps carpeted with sycamore leaves. As a Cantonese kid accustomed to year-round greenery, I finally understood the meaning of "one leaf heralds autumn." 📖 An Autumn Primer ▪️ The Economics of Color From the Tidal Basin to the National Mall, every tree engages in the most extravagant display of color: The ginkgo trees along Mount Vernon Trail forge pure gold sun fragments The maples in Rock Creek Park stitch sunset clouds into brocade The Virginia creeper on Georgetown stone walls burns with wine-colored flames ▪️ The Geography of Sound Stillness composes the most sophisticated symphony: Leaves spiraling down beneath Union Station's vaulted ceiling Jazz from the Kennedy Center terrace mingling with the crunch of fallen leaves The swish of leaf brooms at 6 AM outside the National Archives 🎭 Urban Theater Waiting at a Constitution Avenue crosswalk, I found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with a former president in a baseball cap. Gesturing toward a corner hot dog stand, he remarked, "I used to eat those in my younger days." In that moment, the begonias outside the White House fence suddenly felt familiar. 🌃 A Narrative of Safety Compared to New York's subway bustle or Chicago's late-night sirens, even dusk feels gentle here: Dupont Circle's outdoor cafés filled with newspaper-reading seniors Night projections at the Natural History Museum casting dinosaur skeleton silhouettes The aroma of pho still wafting through Union Market at 2 AM When the last sycamore leaf landed in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, its ripples startled the clouds mirrored in the water. The boy who once listened to cicadas under banyan trees in Lingnan couldn't have known that years later, beside the Potomac River, he would decipher time's shape through a single red maple leaf. #LingnanToDC #WashingtonAutumnNotes #CitySafetyCheck #UnexpectedCelebrityEncounters #FourSeasonsAwakening