I have been fascinated by New York City where I have stayed and worked for the last three years. But when a new assignment recently sent me to Washington, I was excited about the opportunity to know more about this mystic capital of the nation and probably the world.

I like New York, where about half of the inhabitants were born outside the United States. It's a colorful city for all the good and the bad. 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, though my experience on previous trips to DC had been positive.

And I agreed with Jerry Cohen, a respected legal expert on Chinese law, when he told me last week that it is a great and important time to be in DC.

But the political dramas unfolding in DC in the past weeks and in the months and years ahead are totally different from those being staged every day in the Theater District in the Big Apple.

At the New Year's Eve party in our Times Square office on Monday, as friends and colleagues waited and watched the ball drop amid a huge festive crowd downstairs in the freezing night, several of us were keeping an eye on the TV for hours to see whether and how the House of Representatives would vote on the budget plan bill.

The so-called fiscal cliff, which would trigger automatic tax increases and spending cuts, was temporarily avoided less than one hour before the New Year. But the watered-down solution does not seem to solve any long-term problems for the nation.

For one, the mounting US debt will not decline and Obama will have to fight another tough battle in the coming two months to ask the Congress to lift the debt ceiling in order to avoid a government shutdown.

Obama talked tough on this issue before he returned in a victorious mood to Hawaii for vacation after the House passed the bill. He had to leave his wife and two daughters in Hawaii and rush back to the White House last week in a last-ditch effort to seek compromise with Republicans.

But the budget plan as well as demands for more spending cuts from Republicans mean that Obama's plan to rebuild America, by investing in education and infrastructure, may well be all talk during his second term in office.

One of my constant puzzlements living in New York is why the world's greatest city has failed to provide cell phone service in its underground subway system. If you think time is money for Wall Street folks, it's quite astonishing that many of them do not seem to be annoyed by this daily inconvenience. Welcome to the 1980s once you are underground.

The DC subway system is newer, but when I called a colleague the cell phone signal was quickly lost deep into the subway tunnel.

The National Press Building, where my new office and many of the news organizations are located, has the same problem. You have uninterrupted cell phone signals only in corners near the windows and near the elevators. Does that mean that I will miss many calls?

Washington is a different place. Faces are less expressive than those in New York.

And I am not sure if Washingtonians are friendlier, either. On Wednesday evening when my friends were helping me move my boxes and suitcases into my apartment, two women came and told me that I should go through the back door.

I told them that I had permission from the building manager. One old woman, nevertheless, pulled out her cell phone and started to take pictures of us. She promised to report us to the building's board of directors.

Welcome to Washington.

The author, based in Washington, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. Email: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/04/2013 page11)