I have been fascinated by New York City, where I stayed and worked for the last three years. But I was equally excited with the opportunity to shift to Washington DC on a new assignment, for I could know more about the "mystic" capital of the United States.

I like New York, half of whose inhabitants were born outside the US. It's a colorful city for all the good and bad things. So when one of my colleagues working in DC told me that Washingtonians are friendlier than New Yorkers, I didn't really know what that meant, although my experience during my many previous visits to the US capital had been good.

I agree with Jerry Cohen, a respected legal expert on Chinese law, who told me last week that it was an important time to be in DC. However, the political dramas unfolding in DC during the past weeks and the ones to come in the months and years ahead are totally different from those being staged in the Theater District in the Big Apple every day.