The highlight of the Foreign Correspondents' Club Christmas party this year was the showing of a tongue-in-cheek documentary compiled by a colleague from a television bureau who went exploring with a camera in Beijing's forbidden basements.
These are the nether regions below the apartment block in our compounds, used by maintenance staff. There he found (screams of horror) nests of giant cockroaches, and standing water with mosquito larvae. Living in a new (two years old) building, I had felt myself immune from cockroaches until late this year, when the first one appeared near a water pipe in our sixth-floor apartment. A couple more followed and I thought that an assault on the basement with flame-thrower might be called for. But we have managed to keep them at bay with a concoction of pellets recommended by Chinese friends and called "Last Supper".
But my most important achievement as Asia Correspondent in the past year, by far, has been my victory over the Beijing mosquitoes. Every night in warm weather a single mosquito would penetrate the apartment, lusting for Irish blood, causing much irritation and loss of sleep.
But they come no more, thanks to the wonderful power of electric mosquito tablets. These vibrate silently in a power socket all night, releasing some sort of killer vapour into the air which is guaranteed (I hope it's true) not to affect humans.
Pests apart, life in Beijing improved somewhat in 1998, and the new year is full of (material) promise. The oldest buildings in our compound are being knocked down, and well-designed modern blocks of flats put in their place. This is happening all over the city, which has gone through another year of upgrading. Construction goes on relentlessly, day and night.
Old Beijing is disappearing. Looking south from our apartment across a little park, the near horizon has changed dramatically in 12 months, with several high, modern buildings of glass and steel completed or nearing completion. When lit with neon in the evenings they look like a miniature Manhattan. One building has a digital clock which shows the temperature, but sometimes we can't see it because of the thick smog.
The weather plays tricks in Beijing. For long periods the air stagnates, laying a quilt of toxic pollutants over the city. But then inside maybe an hour, without any perceptible wind, it disappears, to be replaced by a sparkling clear atmosphere, as a mass of fresh air slides in from the north.
This year the China Daily for the first time began to give us pollution readings, which confirm what we know, that this is an unhealthy place to live in, and getting worse as traffic becomes ever heavier. Our hopes for the future rest on the promise that by the end of 1999 all traffic will be using lead-free petrol.
At a personal level, another great leap forward came this month with the acquisition of an American-made air cleaner, a device like a little Dalek which hisses away in the corner, controlling the levels of ammonia, benzene, chlorine, formaldehyde, nicotine, smog and ozone in the air.
It has only recently become available in China. Most Western goods can be bought or ordered in Beijing now, and we take for granted things that were unavailable 12 months ago like Mediterranean olives from the Australian Deli or steamed mussels at the new French bistro, or a smoked salmon salad and a pint of Guinness in the Chinese capital's first Irish pub, Durty Nellies, which opened in September.
The big department stores are fast becoming just like those anywhere else in the world, with a full range of designer clothes. In the last year, Haagen Dazs opened an ice cream palace, Dunkin' Donuts has established itself in several places, and Starbucks is due to open its first Beijing coffee shop in January.
Other aspects of Western consumerism are also intruding on our daily lives. Junk mail began appearing this year, advertising everything from new restaurants to science journals. In the past few weeks I have begun to receive the kind of nuisance telephone calls I got when living in the US. The caller rings, invariably at meal time, to ask if I am interested in buying a new home or taking out an insurance policy.
Pests come in different forms, but I have a feeling that this particular kind will be harder to get rid of in 1999 than the ones that venture up from the basement.