Chinese people and the brands they buy

Dragons are notoriously unpredictable beasts. There’s only one thing that can be said with any certainty about them… if you are going to ride one, you’d better hold on tight.

The good news is that this year’s dragon is easily the most civilized of the five that exist in the otherworld of the Chinese zodiac.

I’m pleased to report that the dragon for 2012 has a “water” alter ego no less.

Water, one of the so-called “five elements”, extinguishes the dragon’s fiery breath and dampens its natural tendency to charge about the place.

This is just as well. The last thing the world’s economy needs in these parlous economic times is a Chinese dragon doing what dragons naturally do: behaving randomly.

What about in its own backyard? Is a dragon with a counterbalancing water element the best kind of dragon for China in 2012?

Because, given the circumstances that are set out below, any dragon without such characteristics would be the wrong dragon:

When you add all of this up, it’s not surprising that there have recently been several cautionary statements issued by various government spokespeople and organisations that have seemingly been designed to dampen people’s expectations going into the Chinese New Year:

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported last week that a central-government three-day central economic work conference in Beijing had described the global economic outlook as “extremely grim and complicated”.

The report also warned about “unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable” strains on China’s economic development.

The good news for marketers generally is that, in 2011 (versus 2010), total retail sales increased by a healthy 17.1 per cent – only marginally down on the 18.4 per cent growth in 2010 (versus 2009). The even better news is that, in the month of December 2011, retail sales were 18.1 per cent higher than in December 2010.

Mr Gao from Chengdu, a 24-year-old born in the year of the dragon (the dragon before last), throws some light on what’s behind the seemingly contradictory economic indicators:

“Of course times are difficult… I have to work much harder these days than I’ve ever done… my boss owns me,” he told me with a grimace.

In these tough times, people know they have no choice; they’ve just got to work harder, and they have to put up with whatever is thrown at them. They also know that a positive attitude (drive, determination, and resilience in the face of hardship) is their only hope.

In other words, they just have to jump onto the Water Dragon’s back, take a deep breath, dig their spurs into its side… and hold on for dear life (The Water Dragon is, by the way, a fairly placid animal until someone tries to ride it).

“That’s why I feel I really deserve to have the things I want.” [Things to buy; things to do; things to experience…]

“Of course it’s crazy at work, I have to start before 8.30am and finish 12 hours later, and so when I get time off, I really go for it [Shopping, eating out, going to the gym…]. And when I get a long break, I jump on a plane and go somewhere I’ve always dreamed of going,” she said.

I asked Ms Chen what she planned to do during the 7 day Chinese New Year break. “Go to Thailand!” she gushed.

“I’ll be with them on New Year’s Eve [the most important family gathering], and I’ll leave the following day.” [Her boss has agreed that she can return to the office two days later than everyone else].

The more I listened to people talk about The Year of the Water Dragon, the more I realised that their coping mechanism for the strains and stresses of working at such a frenetic pace is, funnily enough, “counterbalancing”.

When things are so far out of kilter, when the pressure is so intense, then there has to be an equal and opposite force applied to restore balance.

Getting up really early is usually not much fun. But today's early rise was an exception. I was so looking forward to the day that I jumped out of bed two hours earlier than the early alarm-call. Because today's the day the pandas have their first picnic of PYO (pick-your-own) bamboo.

So, with camera in hand, I joined a bus-full of reporters, photographers, and film crews and headed for the grand opening ceremony of Panda Valley, in Dujiangyan, on the outskirts of the Chengdu city administrative area, about 30 miles from the city centre.

Panda Valley, which was built at a cost of about 300 million yuan (US$48M), is designed to be a "half-way valley" between the Chengdu Panda breeding centre and the mountainous wilds of Sichuan province – home to the vast majority of the estimated 1600 wild pandas.

After what was described as "extensive profiling" of the 108 candidates at the breeding centre, six pandas – two males and four females, all aged between two and four years – were chosen to be the ones to lift their first paws on what is destined to be a long walk to freedom.

Zhang Zhihe, chief of the Chengdu research base, says that thirty to forty giant pandas will follow the first six to Panda Valley before the program is gradually extended to all the pandas in the Chengdu base. Therefore, the breeding centre will become the "nursery" that "feeds" the Panda Valley "training complex".

The training regime at Panda Valley is designed to prepare the pandas for their eventual release into the wild. At which point, the "vacancies" at Panda Valley are to be filled by "graduates" from the breeding centre.

Before these captive-bred pandas are released into the wild, they must first convince China's foremost panda-experts that they would be able to fend for themselves.

This is likely to be easier said than done. According to China-media reports, 8 out of the 10 pandas released thus far from other programs have fared less than well: six have had to be rescued because they were suffering from "severe weight loss"; one died; and one is missing presumed dead.

So, with the odds of surviving in the wild stacked against them – and with so much at stake – it is reasonable to assume that their "training" period at Panda Valley is likely to be a long one.

But, despite the difficulties, the authorities are determined to make this project a resounding long-term success. And, what's more, they are going out of their way to make sure the world knows about their ambitious goals – this openness is in stark contrast to the way that other area's programs have been managed.

The disappearance of Xiang Xiang in the mountains of Wolong in 2007 was particularly mysterious. I heard the sad news about its death while I was staying at the remote Wuyipeng panda research station, weeks before the "official" news release (click here to read the article).

The opening of Panda Valley was always going to get a good amount of news coverage, because pandas are genetically newsworthy animals – just google "panda and Edinburgh" and you'll see what I mean (or try "panda and Paris" on Sunday, after Huan Huan and Yuan Zi's chartered Chengdu to Paris "FedEx Panda Express" touches down).

But Panda Valley's media pulling-power was ratcheted up several notches when Yao Ming, the recently retired basketball player – who continues to be the world's most famous Chinese sports celebrity – decided that he would grace the opening ceremony with his attention-grabbing 7' 6" personality. What's more, Mr Yao and his wife, Ye Li, looked thrilled to be there.

I have got a lot of time for Yao Ming, who is putting together a fine CV of good causes he is helping. Yao seems to be genuinely concerned about the plight of the Panda, and mindful of the threat posed to its environment by uncontrolled urban development.

Yesterday, I asked a 17-year-old chap, in a McDonalds in Chengdu, what he thought about Yao Ming generally, and about his endorsement of Panda Valley in particular.

He thought for a moment, before telling me, "I like him a lot. He was a great [basketball] player... who struggled at first [he was physically not up to it in his first years apparently] ... but became an outstanding NBA [National Basketball Association] player."

"He made a lot of money... but that never changed him... Now he's retired... so I guess he wants to be remembered for something else [other than a great basketball player]...He wants to give something back..."

This generation of Chinese young people tend to be labelled as self-centred and shallow (unfairly, in my view), so I was heartened by the young man's thoughtful response to my question.

Which brings me to Abraham Maslow.

Maslow was born in a tough neighbourhood in New York in 1908. As a young boy he was often the victim of anti-semitic bullying, which he tried (and failed) to deter by building up his physique. He was, however, better at thinking than he was at self-defence, and eventually concentrated his energy on building a considerable intellect.

His name is most famously associated with his work on the hierarchy of human needs, which has been distilled by many authors into a pyramid-shaped chart – that shows "basic", physiological needs at the base and higher-states of development further up the pyramid.

In short: First find some food, and then build a house with a strong door, before finding a mate, and then begin to worry about whether your house is worth more than your neighbour's (and, of course, whether your Smart TV is smarter).

According to Maslow, most people reach the acme of their personal development at that point [at the 60 inch Smart TV stage]. But some people, he argued, went on to achieve the nirvana of what he described as self-actualisation [realising that there are more important things in life than the size of your TV screen or the slimness of your mobile phone].

The problem with the term "self-actualisation" is that it means different things to different people.

I had another problem with it. I had never come across an inspiring description of it – which was odd considering that it is surely meant to be a state worth aspiring to.

I say "had" because I recently stumbled upon the wonderful definition that appears below. It is taken from the transcript of an inspirational speech ("Self-actualisation and beyond"), given by Abraham Maslow himself (while professor of psychology at Brandeis University) to a conference in Chatham, Massachusetts, in May 1965.

At the beginning of the speech, he declared that his objective was to make sense of the "grand abstraction" of the state of self-actualisation... by explaining what it meant at a given moment in time.

And the time he pulled out of thin air was "Tuesday at four-o'clock".

This is what he said: "Self-actualizing people are, without one exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves. They are devoted, working on something which is precious to them – some calling or vocation in the old sense, the priestly sense."

Which reminds me...

The 17-year-old I talked with in McDonalds also said something that sent a tingle down my spine:

"I hope that I can follow in Yao Ming's footsteps one day."

I asked him what position he played and what his shooting was like.

He laughed:

"No, I'm not talking about basketball! ...I'm no good at that... I'd like to do some work... some conservation work... to help to save the Panda."

Remarkably it was a Tuesday. Even more remarkably, it was approaching 4pm.

People have been calling it “Sweet City” [Tian Cheng] for generations. The name pays tribute to Neijiang's erstwhile regional importance as a producer of candied fruit [guofu] and grower of sugar cane. Guofu can still be found – if you are prepared to search for it that is. But, as befits the way it is sold in the few surviving local street markets, what’s left of the industry is merely a quaint side-stall on the outer fringe of the fast-developing Neijiang economy. But that's not to say that things have turned sour for Neijiang's 4.3 million people. On the contrary, the fast-rate of economic growth that Neijiang has enjoyed in recent years (16.2 per cent year-on-year GDP growth in 2010), and the significant growth opportunities that are accruing from the city’s position at the centre of the newly-established Chengdu and Chongqing economic zone, suggest that Neijiang is still living up to its “Sweet City” promise.

But what about the recent slowdown in China's economic development (the country is likely to finish the year with a growth figure of about 9 per cent), and the significant problems that many exporters are encountering because of the drop-off in demand… surely these factors will feed through to the local economy and render last year’s 16.2 per cent growth unsustainable?

Well, as jaw-dropping as the Neijiang GDP figure is, it appears that it can be maintained at very close to this level (at least for this year and next). Tang Limin, the Neijiang Party Chief and head of the Neijiang city government, told me when I interviewed him on the 4th November that Neijiang is on track to deliver 15.5 per cent year-on-year GDP growth in 2011; which he forecast would increase to 16 per cent growth in 2012.

As well as revealing positive news on the city's GDP growth forecast, Mr Tang also told me that he was confident that his city's position at the heart of the new economic zone would ensure that increasingly more domestic and foreign investors would realise that Neijiang is the place to come. He was also convinced that the value of Neijiang's exports would grow significantly (the city exported goods and services to the value of US$168m in 2010, spread across 68 countries).

During the 90 minute interview, Mr Tang repeatedly turned to point at the huge map of the area that was mounted on the wall behind us. The map looked as if it had been produced by someone from Neijiang's public affairs department, because a series of concentric ovals (with Chengdu and Chongqing on opposite sides of the innermost oval) drew attention to Neijiang city at the heart of it all. To further emphasise Neijiang's centrality, a line that represents the main Chengdu to Chongqing highway cut from east to west along the centre of the oval, bisecting Neijiang (thankfully, the expressway is actually several minutes drive from the city centre).

“Xin!” … [Heart], said Mr Tang, …"Neijiang is at the heart!" [of the new economic zone]. But I had been wrong to think that this concept had been dreamt up by local politicians keen to assert their claim to the centre of the zone. The Neijiang Party Chief pointed out that the map had, in fact, been drawn up by none other than China's central government. Then I realised just how significant the map is. Neijiang (a "tier 3" city) at the heart is flanked by the municipality of Chongqing to the east and Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, to the west ("tier 1" and "tier 2" cities respectively in political terms at least).

Quite clearly, as well as being the "Sweet City", Neijiang is also a proxy for the "Sweet Spot" of China's future economic development.

As Beijing and Shanghai languish in the (relative) doldrums of high single-figure GDP growth in the next few years, third tier cities such as Neijiang, and many fourth tier cities as well, have been handed the baton of double-digit economic growth. The cities that will score the highest are the cities that will be able to feed and feed off the city economies of economically-vibrant adjacent larger cities (Neijiang is particularly blessed therefore because Chengdu and Chongqing are growing at 15 and 17 per cent respectively).

The stunning performance of Neijiang-like smaller cities in terms of GDP growth is also feeding through to significant increases in their residents' personal wealth, disposable income, and the amount of money that is spent on brands and stuff. In Neijiang, for instance, sales of consumer goods in 2010 exceeded 20 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of almost 19 per cent.

In summary, consumers in so-called “lower-tier” cities will take an ever-larger share of China’s consumption pie. This has been glaringly obvious for a long time of course, but understanding what to do about it from a marketing perspective has not been as well documented.

Simply switching focus from “upper tier” to “lower tier” cities may sound like a good idea to some, but not all lower tier cities are developing equally of course. And, as is demonstrated by Chengdu and Chongqing, some “higher tier” cities deserve to be the focus of more, not less attention. Or, putting it another way, China-wide marketing and distribution strategies that are not built on an exhaustive city by city evaluation of economic reality and potential – as well as residents' standard of living and well-being – have every chance of missing China's Sweet Spot.

What, I wonder, constitutes a Chinese, or for that matter an English, French, Italian, Spanish, Swiss, German, or American luxury brand? Does the brand have to be designed as well as hand-crafted locally? If so, is it a prerequisite that the brand’s designers and artisans are themselves local? Must it bear a name that sounds as if it is from the heartland of the home country? And what about a couple of hundred years of local history being a must, as well as the treasure trove of wonderful stories that tend to come with that? And surely it must tap in to the brand identity of the country of provenance – and be synonymous with one or more of the qualities that are spontaneously associated with the name of its home country? What about the requirement that its head office is based there and, also, that it is listed on the local stock exchange?

Or, more reasonably, is “national association” achieved when a large proportion of the advocates of the brand would spontaneously describe it as a “[insert country here] luxury brand”; and then go on to talk about the country association being an important part of the allure of the brand.

Using this test, Shang Xia would, I reckon, be one of the few brands to qualify as a Chinese luxury brand. The collaboration between the Hermes Group and Ms Jiang Qiong’er (artistic director and CEO) opened its doors in Hong Kong Plaza on Shanghai’s Huaihai Road in September 2010. The shop showcases a treasure trove of hand-crafted jewellery, furniture, apparel, porcelain and home decorations.

Shang Xia, which means “up and down” or “before and “after” in Chinese, positions itself, as its name suggests, as the meeting point old and new. Their website http://www.shang-xia.com/en throws some more light on their thinking: “Shang Xia has the ambition to preserve the beauty and techniques of traditional craftsmanship and embrace the elegance and simplicity of a new 21^st century aesthetic”.

This “fusion” of old and contemporary, traditional and innovative – all fashioned with great craftsmanship using quality materials – has certainly caught the attention of a certain kind of luxury-brand shopper in China.

Ms Ying, a fan of the brand I spoke with in Shanghai, sums up the appeal: “I really like what Shang Xia stands for. It’s great that a Chinese brand can provide me with the best of both worlds.”

It is important to note that when Ms Ying talks about the “best of both worlds”, she is not referring to any notion of “east meet west” or a happy marriage of Chinese and international design. The two worlds she is referencing are both Chinese worlds.

The first “world” spans five thousand years or so – from the Neolithic epoch up to the end of the Imperial age (funnily enough, the revolution that toppled dynastic rule began 100 years ago today and was the inspiration for this article).

During that time, China’s artists, designers, and craftsmen, produced some of the most spectacular luxury goods the world has ever seen. A walk through Beijing’s Palace Museum (within the walls of The Forbidden City) provides just a glimpse of this magnificence: The finest of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century Qing dynasty porcelain is but a short walk away from exquisite jade carvings that were created during Neolithic times; which in turn abut a cornucopia of Song dynasty (960–1279) furniture, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) calligraphy, and Ming dynasty (1368–1644) silks and costumes. Talking of Shang Xia (albeit using different Chinese characters), the Palace Museum also houses fabulous gold jewellery from the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) and Xia dynasty (2100–1600 BC) inscribed drinking-vessels made of bronze.

The second world that Ms Ying refers to is also very much culturally Chinese. This is a world full of drive, energy, and creativity that is characterised by continuous progression. Shang Xia captures the essence of this progression beautifully, according to Ms Ying: “It makes me feel so good to look at the pieces I’ve bought; they really remind me how far China has come,” she says.

No matter how important the impression of modernity with Chinese characteristics may be, there is no getting away from the fact that Ms Jiang’s philosophy mirrors that of the trustees of many luxury brands the world over. As she points out, it is outstanding craftsmanship that is the starting point:

“I think more people in China realize the importance of looking back to our cultural roots, going back and trying to re-evaluate the value of Chinese culture. I’d say it’s still relatively few, but more are looking at the craftsmanship side of things – that’s the angle we start from,” says Ms Jiang (during a recent interview with Jing Daily).

As more and more brands begin to unlock the great Chinese stories of artistry and design than span the ages, and start to render them in a relevant and contemporary way – employing the finest craftsmen to do so of course – then the nature of the luxury market in China will begin to change. The tipping point of this “Chinese luxury brand” movement is still a long way off, but there are sure signs that – among some key influencers at least – the revolution has at long last begun.

Branch 157 of the Jiadeli supermarket chain is a good place to go if you want to check out the latest demand levels of your favourite basket of food, drink and household items. The wine aisle is always one of my first ports of call, not least because regular visits there provide a good indication of just how much urban Shanghai residents' tastes and consumption patterns have changed and are changing.

15 years ago, in local supermarkets such as this, wine was hard to find. If you did manage to track it down, the likelihood was that you would have found what is known in these parts as yellow wine (a local speciality) before you caught sight of a bottle of ‘red’ or ‘white’. Of the brands of grape wine, it was most likely that no more than two would have been on the shelves – locally-produced Dragon Seal and Dynasty were the most likely to be spotted – each occupying a negligible amount of shelf space with just a small number of bottles of a collective-handful of varieties.

Having said that, someone eyeing the selection of reds and whites in 1996 – as meagre as the options would have appeared to anyone from a country with a mature wine market – would actually have been spoilt for choice… compared, that is, with the choice available at the same supermarket just a few years earlier. A friend of mine was so struck by the change that he was moved to write home with the wondrous story of how he could now buy a “half-decent” bottle of local wine in a local supermarket.

As is so often the case in China, it was a government policy that had been the catalyst for the change in consumption habits. In 1996, the then premier Li Peng presented legislation to the party congress that set out the stimulus package to help wine growers. He also spelt out the benefits of wine drinking, compared with the evils of the consumption of baijiu – the white alcohol, favoured by a large proportion of China’s hard-drinkers.

The government of the day was as much concerned about land-use as it was about the nation’s health. Mr Peng went to some trouble to point out that annually 25 billion kg of grain were required to satisfy the nation’s baijiu habit (two kg of grain are needed to distil one litre of baijiu). Whereas – as Mr Peng pointed out – grapes could be grown on less fertile soil, as well as on hillsides.

Such was the pace of development that, in 1997, I also noticed that red wine was beginning to be sold by small grocery stores in a small town in Hebei province, in northern China. The main wine brand ‘up there’ was Great Wall. I had sampled wine in Shanghai before – the aforementioned Dynasty and Dragon Seal to be precise – and I have to say that I was underwhelmed (to the extent that I had only tried each brand on a couple of occasions). There was, though, something about the cleanness and modernity of the Great Wall label – a far cry from the pretentiousness of the two other brands’ labels – that persuaded me to give it a try.

Then again, perhaps it was the Great Wall iconography: steadfast, trustworthy, long-lasting (as opposed to fly by night) that had subconsciously allayed my health concerns (eating or drinking something made by a company I had never heard of was more of a concern back then). Or perhaps it was because Great Wall was produced in my ‘home’ province of Hebei, and I felt some kind of duty to at least try it. Whatever the reason, I decided to buy a bottle.

Not only did the guinea pig live to tell the tale, I was so impressed by the taste that I returned to the same small shop to buy, as a Chinese New Year gift for family and friends, a case of it. I remember that the price for 12 bottles was 288 yuan – about the same price then as a single bottle of a good-quality imported red wine. In the field of Chinese numerology ‘88’ is about as good as it gets, so I took it as a good sign that the gift would be well-liked. I couldn’t have imagined just how accurate a forecasting tool Chinese numerology would prove to be.

Chinese drinking protocol demands that alcoholic drinks are consumed ‘bottoms-up’. The call to action, “ganbei”, literally means to “dry” or empty the glass. I noted that red wine was imbibed in exactly the same time-honoured manner – even though it was being drunk for the very first time. After the experience of that evening’s celebration, it wasn’t difficult to work out that red wine generally, and Great Wall red wine in particular, would most likely enjoy a very bright future in China.

As its name suggests, Great Wall wine is grown on the hillsides beneath the best-known icon of Chinese civilization. The company was originally called the Shacheng winery, which was set up in 1949 – the most auspicious year in Chinese history thanks to the communist party’s proclamation that year of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. So, with such a fine alignment of the stars, it’s safe to say that, in China, red wine doesn’t come any redder than this.

Fast forward 60 or so years, it’s clear from its significant share-of-shelf in ‘branch 157’ that Great Wall is hugely successful in Shanghai – China’s most highly-developed city (judged by many factors not just wine consumption). There were hundreds of bottles of Great Wall on the shelves, of 18 varieties and prices ranging from 28 to 71.8 yuan – a far better showing than its nearest competitor, Changyu (which, in 1892, in Yantai, Shandong province, was the first commercial winery to be established in China). In this local store, Chinese-produced wine occupies 95 per cent of shelf-space. Great Wall accounts for close to 50 per cent of all bottles on display.

Great Wall has invested heavily in the Shanghai market. The most notable illustration of its marketing acumen – not to mention political influence – was and is its victory in securing the exclusive right to be named “Official wine of Expo 2010 Shanghai”. This accolade did wonders for its reputation in China and beyond (its growing success in export markets was cleverly leveraged to improve its reputation at home). Given that red wine lasts, Great Wall’s Shanghai Expo legacy will live on for years via its premium-priced special edition (see photo).

Many sets of category-growth figures in China are impressive, but the growth pattern in the wine category has been nothing short of astonishing: In 1978 – the year that China ‘opened-up’ to the outside world – just 6,000 litres of wine were produced on the mainland. In 1995, just before wine production received the much-publicised government-sponsored fillip, 346 million litres were produced (15 per cent of which was exported). It would take 13 years for production to double (698 million litres in 2008, according to the China Food Association). The really rapid growth phase, though, was as recent as 2009 when production increased by 37.5 per cent year-on-year to 960 million litres – thanks to red wine drinking becoming fashionable among a critical mass of China’s young, urban, upper-middle income group.

A more affluent group of drinkers (also young and urban, but higher-income than the purchasers of locally-produced wine) was, at the same time, driving the demand in the sub-category of imported wine. Figures from the General Administration of Customs (GAC) shows that 171 million litres of wine were imported in 2009, which is about 5 times more than was imported 5 years earlier.

Import figures from January to November 2010 – 260 million litres – show that the thirst for imported wine continues to increase dramatically. Although the volume of imported wine is rising more steeply than the production volume of local wine, it remains to be seen how much of the imported volume is actually being stored (as an investment) instead of being drunk.

It’s also interesting to have a look at the provenance of imported wine. Based on figures for the first half of 2010, when 120.7 million litres were imported, France was (probably) the leading exporter, supplying 26 per cent of total import volume. 94 per cent of French wine came in to China in bottles. Whereas wine from Australia (21 per cent of imports, the 3rd largest) was mostly (56 per cent) transported in ‘bulk’ (classified by the GAC as arriving in a container of 2 litres or more).

The wild card in the pack is Chile, whose ‘bulk’ wine accounted for a whopping 24 per cent of the total reservoir of imports. There is no mention in the published data of the volume that Chile exported to China in bottles – but if 1.4 million litres were imported that would be enough for it, not France, to take the number one spot overall. That’s in terms of volume of course. When it comes to value of imports, though, there is no contest. France is number one by a country-mile (or kilometre if you prefer).

So, then, it won’t be a surprise to anyone to read that it’s the people up in the top tiers of the wealth pyramid who are consuming French bottled wine. It’s also not surprising that, among wealthy people in China, France is the most admired country brand in the world and that many French brands are coveted because of their perceived excellence.

The vast majority of wine drinkers in China are not drinking French wine, but that’s not to say that Great Wall drinkers and the like don’t aspire to drink it. Although the majority of wine drinkers aren’t able to afford French wine (yet), they are able to experience a category that enjoys a close association with the mystique and sophistication of Frenchness.

There are many who are now drinking Great Wall wine who will expand their repertoire to include French and other countries' wine brands; but there will be many, many times more people who will at some point in the next five years enter this aspirational category thanks to the accessibility of Great Wall and other local brands.

As I have mentioned, the growth of the wine category has indeed been phenomenal. But, as I have indicated, there’s also a real sense that the show has only just begun... not least because wine sales per-capita in mainland China have not yet reached one bottle per year.

After a quick calculation on the back of an envelope I arrived at the prediction that next year will be the year that China reaches the landmark ‘one bottle per year’ consumption level. To give you an idea of just how little this is, though, let me just say that in the UK, for instance, wine consumption is at about 27 bottles per year per-capita (according to the latest available figures from the Wine Institute). In France, in case you are wondering, they drink almost three times that number (76 bottles to be precise).

Most of those who have ever cycled in Beijing and lived to tell the tale would have entertained countless muggles (non-cyclists, who don’t have the power to cheat death on a daily basis) with stories of scrapes, near-misses, and worse. Before long – sooner rather than later if there is an attentive audience – the Beijing cyclist will get around to recounting the tale of the “big-one” which, through the magic of story-telling, becomes an increasingly large badge of honour instead of the portent of doom nature intended it to be. Then there are those who prefer to stay silent. I am one of their number.

While cycling in Beijing, I have experienced horrors that I can still not bring myself to talk of. I have been within a second of being annihilated, with several seconds to think about my fate. The really frightening bit is that throughout the ordeal I knew I was powerless to save myself. I have heard the mocking cry of “Zhuyi anquan! Zhuyi anquan! Zhuyi anquan! [Be careful! Be careful! Be careful!]” while feeling its icy metal squeezing me, vice-like, against unforgiving parked cars. I now have a bone-chilling idea what it must be like to feel oneself slipping between a soon-to-be-departing London Underground tube train and the station platform while hearing the warning to “Mind the gap… Mind the gap… Mind the bloody gap”.

I haven’t read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – the dénouement of JK Rowling’s seven book series – but I did see the trailer for the film (Part 1) the other day as I was strolling around Beijing. I have to say that, if the best that you know who – Harry’s nemesis – can summon is a swarm of Death Eaters, then the Boy who Lived is in for a walk in the park. It could have been much, much worse… he could have found himself written into a storyline that has him on a bike in Beijing pursued by a Beijing Bendybus… The bus whose name should never be mentioned.

No amount of training in defence against the Dark Arts would have prepared him for the ordeal with you know what, whose drivers have spent years perfecting the skill of sandwich-making using only cold metal and a sweaty cyclist.

As novel as this may appear, the seemingly wizard idea of creating a Harry Potter storyline with Chinese characteristics – with or without the noble aim of persuading a generation of young Chinese readers that reading can actually be great fun – is not new.

In China, you could be forgiven for not knowing that Ms Rowling has capped her effort at a stingy seven Potter books. For those with an insatiable appetite for all things Harry, there is an ever-growing number of Potter books to choose from:

Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon; Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll; Harry Potter and the Young Heroes; Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Harry Potter; Harry Potter and the Water-repelling Pearl; Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon; Harry Potter and the Golden Turtle; Harry Potter and the Big Funnel – not to mention the topical Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To name just a few of those published.

Then there’s Harry Potter and The Showdown, whose author, a Mr Li from Shanghai, told the New York Times: “I bought Harry Potter 1 through 6 for my son a couple of years ago, and when he finished reading them, he kept asking me to tell him what happens next… We couldn’t wait, so I began making up my own… I had to get up early and go to bed late to write this novel...” Mr Li’s industry was not in vain – more than 150,000 people claimed to have read his book.

At least it’s clear that Mr Li is the author of Harry Potter and The Showdown. Less honourably, the publisher of “Harry Potter and the Strange Horned Beast”, not only claims that the book is written by JK Rowling, they also include her photo and bio. Even the easily-fooled, though, would be wondering about the credibility of the plot suggested by the illustration on the book’s cover: a triceratops and a stick insect from the film, a Bug’s Life (reproduced below from images that appear at www.mutantfrog.com).

Its publisher, The Inner Mongolian People’s Publishing Company, was presumably trying to do its bit to help the region’s tourism drive (Inner Mongolia boasts one of the world’s most important dinosaur fossil grounds, at Erenhot, in the Gobi desert, close to the border with Mongolia).

Then there was what was claimed to be the “eighth” Potter book, “Harry Potter and The Chinese Empire”, which was published and promoted in Shanghai. This effort combined famous Chinese fictional characters of yore with Hogwarts characters in a kung-fu-fighting extravaganza.

As well as the pile of fake titles that have appeared, there is a book-mountain of counterfeit titles (using official and unofficial translations of the actual seven-book series):

One of the most popular of these was the translation of the Deathly Hollows, which was available in China months before the official translation arrived at the book shops. In fact it was finished – by a team of university students working round the clock, “eating nothing but instant noodles” (according to Reuters) – within days of the publication of the 759-page original. In mitigation, the students said, "We translated the book because we love Harry… and we do not intend to use it for commercial purposes”. I am sure JK Rowling and her team of legal advisers were perfectly relaxed after hearing that.

But there is one silver lining in the dark cloud of fakery that hangs over the Chinese Harry Potter market, and that’s the hype that these “authors” and translators add to what is already a wildly successful brand. Indeed, the controversy concerning dubious translations (widely reported in the Chinese press) also translates into more people paying to watch the (officially-released) films at Chinese cinemas.

Cinema goers paid more than 200 million yuan last year to watch Deathly Hallows Part 1, the tenth-highest-grossing film of the year (not a bad achievement considering it was launched on November 19th and is still going strong). That said, I would be surprised if many more than a handful of official DVDs of the Harry Potter franchise have been sold... but that’s another story.

As you can see from the attached photograph, the latest release in the film series continues to play to an eager audience in the capital. I took the photo of the end frame of the trailer outside of Joy City, in the Chaoyang district, which houses the Jinyi international cinema – one of the most impressive in China.

It wasn’t until I put the image on the computer screen that I saw the chilling, unearthly shape of you know what – the bus whose name should not be mentioned.

Harry Potter’s seven-book struggle against evil has come to an end, but my battle with my nemesis is set to continue as soon as the weather warms up and I get back on my bike.

These days, some Beijing taxis come equipped with a small TV screen housed in the back of the front seat passenger's head rest. Just the thing to while away the hours when stuck in one of the capital's infamous traffic jams one might have thought. Well, one would have been hopelessly wrong... the programme schedule actually consists of ads, ads, and a few more ads thrown in for good measure. The notion that content is king and that advertising should be a light seasoning sprinkled on the daily viewing meal, and not the staple diet, has somehow escaped the attention of the media company that owns the screens. And so, after a few seconds, I lost interest and turned my attention to something more interesting – the intricate stitching on the headrest cover.

Then something caught my attention. People wearing just their underwear and a brave face were being pelted with snowballs and blasted with snow from a snow machine. The thought that I was watching some new, sadomasochistic winter X game was dispelled when I caught the point of the film. It was a technology commercial no less. But a technology commercial with a difference. The technology is Omni-Heat, the brand is Columbia Sportswear.

There was also something about little silver dots, heat retention, and other high-tech stuff, but the words were less striking than the product demonstration. People, still in their knickers, who were by now turning various hues of blue, were donning Columbia jackets, and instantly thawing out. This is a product demonstration right out of the marketing manual: Dramatise the problem (life-threatening hypothermia is a particularly eye-catching dramatisation), and then a quick cut to the surprising solution (in this case, the life-saving 'Omni-Heated' Columbia jacket).

After getting out of the warmth of the cab, and heading into the biting northerly breeze that was whistling around the high towers of Beijing's Central Business District, my thoughts returned to Omni-Heat and, more to the point, my realisation that the 'feathers' in my synthetic down jacket were far less 'advanced' than they should have been. I concluded that I was wearing yesteryear's winter-protection and that my discomfort (now that I knew about the life-saving advantage of Omni-Heat) was self-inflicted. Resigned to my fate, I pushed on, head down; while cursing the Beijing climate and the manufacturer of my jacket with equal vehemence.

I then turned the corner and was astonished to see that some of the people from the ad I had just watched had, by some quirk of fate and otherworldly portal, been teleported to Beijing and were standing naked before me. Naked, that is, except for their Omni-Heated jacket which was held in front of them. "Feathers!?" they seemed to be mocking. "Serves you bloody well right!".

It was not until I got closer to the shop window that I realised that the figures were actually cardboard cut-outs. From the startled reactions of some of the people who caught the cut-outs out of the corner of their eye, it was clear that I wasn't the only one to be fooled by the window display. I managed to snap several shots of the reactions of passers-by before the cold got too much, and I just had to move on.

Columbia Sportswear have been around in China for many years, but this is the first time that they have grabbed my attention. Then again, according to Dan Hanson, Vice President of Marketing at Columbia Sportswear, it would have been hard for me to miss it. He told Business Wire that “...We will be telling the Omni-Heat story through a vast array of media channels and creative executions that will make it nearly impossible for any consumer to miss the significance of this innovative warmth technology.”

'Innovation' is clearly something that Columbia take very seriously. The company, which has its headquarters in Oregon (harsh winters spring to mind), has even created the position of "director of global innovation". That post was held by Michael 'Woody' Blackford, before he was promoted to the position of Vice President of Global Innovation in August last year. The affable Woody told Outdoorindustry.org, a trade news website, that innovation was the difference between success and failure in the highly-competitive sports apparel category. He likened the brand drivers of the category to that of the computer category's:

"We don't want to be stuck in the position of PC makers who are essentially at the mercy of Microsoft and Intel to bring innovation to the market... You do that and you find yourself in the commodity business. We are more attracted to what Apple has done, where they control both the hardware and software and have happy customers," said Mr Blackford. It is clear from this analogy that Columbia regard Omni-Heat as the brand's proprietary software.

It is not surprising that, as the brand has become more high profile and better able to command higher prices, it has been increasingly targeted by unscrupulous manufacturers in China looking to cash-in on its fame and fortune. Columbia realise that brand-building through innovation is only sustainable if the integrity of the brand name is not compromised by the evils of counterfeiting. It has therefore focussed on working with the Chinese authorities in an effort to cut off the supply of knock-offs.

As well as waging war on the companies that manufacture the counterfeit items and the retailers that sell them, Columbia has joined forces with other high profile brand names in an effort to target the landlords who knowingly lease retail space to unscrupulous traders – such as the landlords of the Beijing Silk Market, one of the main counterfeiters' trading centres in China (and one of the most glaringly embarrassing contradictions to the Chinese authorities' claim that it is doing all it can to protect intellectual property).

Last winter, in the war to defend the integrity of its intellectual property, Columbia Sportswear participated in more than 50 factory, warehouse and retail raids across China. Let's hope that, this winter, Omni-Heat’s "distinctive reflective silver-dot lining", which a spokesperson for the brand went on to describe as "...The most innovative warmth solution to hit the outdoor industry in decades and allows consumers to see the technology as well as feel it”, doesn't become an even bigger target for the apparel category's hardware and 'software' fraudsters.

There is at least one aspect of this category that is not analogous to computer hardware and software though: wittingly or unwittingly, purchasing a counterfeit item in this category could lead to a slow, painful death.

Roll up! Roll up! Hang on a minute… the odds are that people in this particular lottery won’t be rolling anywhere anytime soon. The capital city of the nation that outlaws gambling (with the exceptions of state and provincial-run lotteries of course, not to mention the rollercoaster stock exchanges) announced today that it will introduce a lottery for car registrations from January 1st.

But blogs and forum bulletin boards all over China have been buzzing with news of the impending legislation for at least two weeks. The question on many people’s lips is, which city will be next (and when)?

Another hot question is, what’s the point of denying people the right to buy a car when there are other – far more effective ways – of reducing traffic congestion? The reality of course is that the measure has not been designed to reduce snarl ups. That was never the aim. The people behind the scheme have a far more modest ambition: to slow down the rate of growth of future registrations.

At the end of 2010, the number of Beijing-registered vehicles is likely to hit the five million mark; 900,000 of which would have their ‘jing’ number plates registered this year (‘jing’ is the character on the plate that signifies Beijing registration).

Next year’s cap has been set at a ‘mere’ 20,000 vehicles per month (240,000 vehicles in total) – perhaps about a quarter of 2011’s potential demand. That doesn’t seem a lot, bearing in mind that 30,000 vehicles were sold last week alone as panic buying spread all over the city after word of the impending legislation got out.

Which brings me to the blow that will be dealt to the economy generally and the auto-industry in particular: The economic ‘loss’ of about 750,000 car sales is significant. Just as significant is the effect on the psychology of the business planning of the auto-companies – if Beijing can install such a drastic measure with only a few days ‘official’ notice, then what’s to stop a dozen cities or more changing the rules at a moment’s notice.

The long supply chain of car manufacturing necessitates that production is geared-up and geared-down slowly and smoothly, and that the expenditure levels of marketing activity is set months ahead of the planned-for sales shift. Auto-companies plan years and quarters ahead, not weeks and days. So, if the policy is suddenly rolled out to other cities, the rapid turning of the auto-production supply tap from full-flow to a trickle will have severe consequences.

If, on the other hand, the policy is not rolled out beyond Beijing, then the auto-makers’ suffering (and the suffering of the economy that relies on them) will be manageable – although the companies who sell proportionately more volume in Beijing will of course be worse off than their competitors whose sales are not so reliant on customers in the capital. That said, if you were the boss of an auto-company, would your China 2011 (excluding Beijing) plan be bullish, or would you gear-down production just in case? If you were the owner of a car dealership in Beijing, however, the future is less uncertain – it is unquestionably bleak.

If other cities don’t follow suit – and I believe they would be ill-advised to do so – then one of the Beijing government’s most unpopular policies in recent times will become even more unpopular. Watching people in the comfort of their cars drive past you as you stand at a bus stop or wait for a taxi on a frigidly cold Beijing night is one thing, but – for would-be car owners who haven’t won the number plate lottery – the feeling of injustice would be compounded if Beijing were the only city to treat its citizens in this way.

Ms Jin is one of the millions who are upset by the new legislation. She writes on her blog, “I started working three years ago after leaving university, and have been saving up for one ever since. I was hoping to buy a car next year, but now I realise I have to try my luck in the lottery. I’ve never won anything in my life, so I don’t hold out much hope. It’s so unfair.”

What Ms Jin doesn’t realise, however, is that she won’t even be allowed to enter the lottery. According to her blog, she is from Xi’an, and will therefore have a Xi’an hukou (registration document). She is what is termed a waidi (an outsider) and as such she will be barred from registering a vehicle in Beijing from January 1st. It makes no difference that she studied in Beijing for four years and has lived in Beijing a further three years.

This new vehicle legislation is just the latest example of discrimination against the millions of waidi in the capital, who are denied the privileges that many people with a Beijing hukou take for granted.

The damning criticism of the policy thus far from Beijingers and from the waidi who have worked out that they are to be barred from entering the lottery – has already caused one high profile head to roll. When harmony has been so disrupted; someone – whose position is high enough to send a signal to others, but not so high as to upset the order of things – must be blamed and publicly humiliated.

So, spare a thought for Huang Wei, a former vice mayor of Beijing municipality, who has been unceremoniously transferred from Beijing to the north-west-frontier region of Xinjiang – more than 4,000km from the capital. Assuming he is driven there and that he gets to keep his Beijing-registered car, then at least that will be one car fewer to clutter Beijing’s roads. There will also be one car fewer with a municipal-government licence plate (700,000 of which are reported to be on Beijing’s road) to upset the people in the long queues for a Beijing bus or taxi.

If you happen to be in Beijing with a seven year-old and you think that it's too cold/hot/windy/polluted to visit the zoo, the Fragrant Hills, or one of the many public parks (as it tends to be most weekends of the year), then you could do much worse than to head for the Science and Technology Museum (just east of the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium). From a distance, the cavernous structure that houses the museum looks like it has been built by a giant child using toy bricks. Then again, there may be those who prefer the description on the official website: "The embodiment of the intrinsic correlations between man and nature as well as science and technology."

Keen to find out more about these "intrinsic correlations" (and also to escape the painfully cold north wind) I paid the 80 yuan admission price for the two of us, and hurried inside. My first impression was that I had entered the same giant-child's play room: a dizzying combination of space and scattered games and activities. The action was on five levels, each with its own theme and vibe: The "Children's Science Paradise" section was the first port of call. Then we moved on to "Exploration and Discovery", "Science, Technology and Life", "Innovation and Harmony" and last but by no means least, "The Glory of China".

Wherever we went, there were lots of things for the eager hands and inquisitive mind of a seven year-old to explore. As interesting as my daughter found the exhibits, I couldn't help thinking that it was all a bit tame and rather pedestrian. Perhaps I've spent too much time watching The Frizz... the red-haired, high-spirited science teacher who drives The Magic School Bus. In every episode she implores her students to, "Take chances; Make mistakes" before venturing out to explore an exciting aspect of science. "Chances" and "Mistakes", however, seem to have no place in the Beijing Science and Technology museum, which presumably sticks tightly to the guidelines dictated by China's school-curriculum.

All of the activities on offer had predictable and certain results. Take "The Amazing Journey of a Ball", one of the showcase exhibits, for example. If you know about the Mouse Trap game, then imagine a giant roller-coaster version. Or think about the Honda precision-engineering TV commercial... the one that demonstrates a chain reaction of car bits falling, ricocheting, and colliding... that eventually trigger the windscreen wipers. In the Science and Technology museum version, kids are encouraged to set ball after ball in motion from different heights (select height A, B, or C); use compressed air to start stage 2 of the quest (one setting); and then propel the balls onwards and downwards (select force A, B, or C) to complete the circular journey. Balls fly through the air, bounce off angled metal discs, land in wire baskets, swoop down chutes... all in a mesmerising blur. But there wasn't a single ball that failed to make it round the circuit because a child had applied too little or too much force or taken too long or not long enough to pull a lever or press a button.

Then there was the "moon-walking" experience. There was a 20 minute queue of excited youngsters waiting to take their turn. But, hey, what's a 20 minute wait when you can come away thinking that you have walked in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong. I remember the grainy, ethereal footage of Armstrong's moon-walking in 1969, when I was about the same age as my daughter. I watched open-mouthed at Armstrong's antics as he performed the highest of high-wire circus acts that was a quantum leap beyond moon-walking. It was full-on, no-holds-barred moon-leaping, or moon bunny-jumping, or moon-bouncing, or perhaps even moon-bounding. He looked like a man that had taken his "giant leap" speech to heart. He bounced for joy because he was thrilled to be there. Boring-old "moon-walking" (NASA's preferred term), was presumably designed by PR gurus to make it appear less dangerous than it clearly was.

Cut to Beijing, 2010. Each kid is weighed before being allowed to take her or his "maximum two minutes" turn on the contraption that is pictured below. The weight of the child determines how far the counter-balancing weight is moved back. Thus, each child gets the same degree of movement. But, no matter how hard you try to change the laws of physics (and goodness knows my daughter tried really hard) all you can do is move, very slowly, up a little, down a little, and sideways a bit. No bouncing/leaping/bunny-hopping/bounding allowed apparently. What is wrong with a "gravity joy-stick" to control your own elevation and bounciness for goodness sake. I then noticed the Chinese characters stencilled on the side of the machine: "moon-stroller" (obviously designed with harmony in mind).

Talking of harmony: The stated theme of the Science and Technology museum and the official translation of the yellow Chinese characters you see in the above photo is (I'm not making this up by the way): "To experience science and inspire innovations; to serve the general public and promote harmony". It seems that every public building, every newsworthy project, every public statement, and every domestic policy that's written about in the China press (or appears as an official slogan) is designed to "promote harmony". Which is all well and good of course. Particularly when it is the result of innovation that has been inspired by a visit to the Science and Technology museum.

I am sure that the vast majority of the thousands of kids who visited today would have been genuinely excited by some of the things they saw. I can't help thinking though that they would have been even more inspired had they been challenged to "Take chances" and "Make mistakes".

On the contrary, the Chinese education system instils the opposite philosophy into its teachers and students. In the highly-competitive race to pass the gaokao (or college and university entrance exam) students will be made to learn several hundred "standard answers" by rote. Neither the teacher nor student (both of whose career progression depend on getting high scores) will stray from carefully rehearsed responses to set questions. The torture begins from an early age, because only the highest-scoring primary school kids can get into the best-scoring middle schools whose intake have the best chance of progressing to the best-scoring high-schools... which are, in turn, likely to groom the best gaokao scorers. It's not surprising, then, that in a survey covering 21 countries, conducted by International Educational Progress Evaluation Organization, Chinese students finished (joint) bottom of the class in terms of their ability to use their imagination. Nor is it a surprise that Chinese kids were top of the class in maths.

The China Daily, in a hard-hitting (for them) editorial said yesterday that "This global study should make us swing into action and help our students to throw open their young minds to imagination and creativity". The article goes on to say that it is the parents' as well as the educators' responsibility to make kids use their imagination. While I agree with this, I can't help feeling that it is the system that sets the agenda. Chinese parents feel that they have no choice but to focus their energy and hard-earned income on helping to improve their child's exam score. Inevitably, the development of their child's imagination suffers as a consequence.

Parents know that the kids who get to the best universities – by dint of them achieving high gaokao scores – are likely to get on the fast-track to the best careers (in the fields of technology, government administration and business). Many parents are not aware, however, that the really high-achievers in the exam – the gaokao zhuangyuan (the top scorers, the ones that didn't make mistakes) – are actually the serial under-achievers... Earlier this year, the China Daily reported that, "A survey that kept track of more than 1,000 top scorers from 1977 to 2008 found that none of the top [scorers] stood out in the field of academics, business or politics." So there you have it... proof – if proof were indeed needed – that those who never made a mistake never made anything.

Dave Cameron in Beijing today (photos from Tesco's China website: click on image to view)

If you find yourself in Beijing with just 48 hours to take in the sights you've been dreaming of visiting ever since you discovered China in Boy's Own, then where to go? The Great Wall? According to a Chinese proverb you can't call yourself a man until you've been there, so how could you not. Tiananmen? A must. Peking University? Big tick. The Great Hall of the People? Rude not to if your hosts are throwing a banquet in your honour. Tesco? First port of call of course. Dave was so eager to browse the aisles, in fact, that he was driven directly from the airport to the "Happy Valley" store in Chaoyang district.

Not surprisingly, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Tesco’s Executive Director of Corporate and Legal Affairs, who is one of the trade delegates to accompany Dave was "...absolutely thrilled to welcome the Prime Minister to Tesco in China”.

It wouldn't have taken Dave long to realise, though, that not many of the products on the shelves were "made in Britain". Some products would have been more conspicuous by their absence than others. I wonder if he had – as I have done more than a few times – searched for Walkers' cheese & onion crisps only to discover that the only premium brand of crisps on sale is Lays... a fine crisp of course, but not in the same league as good old Walkers' C&E.

Unfortunately for British exporters, the store's 40,000 customers per week don't go there looking for the "Best of British", such as Norfolk's Binham Blue (which, by the way, is the best cheese in the world... in my view at least). The reason they go there of course is that Tesco has built its success in China on giving people what they know and like at hard-to-better prices.

So successful has Tesco become that they now employ more than 23 thousand people on the Chinese mainland, and are within weeks away of opening their 100th store here. Not a bad achievement considering they opened their first store just 6 years ago. And, according to Ms Neville-Rolfe, "..There’s plenty more to come": US$3 billion more over the next five years according to news reports.

The company clearly has its sights set on closing the gap between itself and Carrefour, whose 2009 sales (according to Euromonitor, a research company) reached 33 billion RMB... three times that of the British late-comer, but still a long way behind the 45 billion RMB amassed by Walmart, the number one international brand in the category, which opened its first shop on the mainland in 1996 (click here to view Walmart's Chinese website).

Increasingly, though, the revenue that Tesco accumulates from its 4.5 million weekly transactions (versus, btw, 20 million in the UK, where it is number one), although impressive, understates its achievements here. That's because the company has begun to invest heavily in "lifespace malls". The first one of which opened in Qingdao, in Shandong province, in January, with reportedly 50,000 people flocking to the opening event. Tesco operates a store within these malls and rents the rest of the space to cinemas, restaurants and other retailers.

The biggest Tesco "lifespace mall" was opened in Qinhuangdao in Hebei province in February. Bloomberg reported in September that this "400,000-square foot (37,161 square-meter) mall... attracted a quarter of million visitors" since it opened and, like me, couldn't resist adding that the "store [within the mall] features grocery products displayed with a 'market' atmosphere as employees call out the price of live crabs in ice buckets..." The next time I'm in Qinhuangdao I'll make sure I take in the vibe, as well as reporting back to you what the Tesco crabs are like.

Talking of crabs, I wonder if someone at the British embassy has taken the fast train (under two hours) to Qinhuangdao to buy several buckets-full for the embassy bash in honour of Dave and his entourage (4 ministers, several academics, and more than 40 captains of industry – the largest British trade delegation to visit China for centuries apparently).

No doubt that the Qinhuangdao Bo Sea crabs – reputed to be among the sweetest in China – will taste even sweeter after word gets round that they have come from Tesco.

Did you know that the Beijing-Shenzhen-Beijing round-trip is 2,416 air miles – which is actually one dozen miles further than the distance a London-based crow would have to fly to check out the delights of Timbuktu? So, what’s the point of this somewhat laboured – not to mention gratuitous – analogy, you may well be wondering (assuming you have got this far to wonder it).

I am, for the benefit of those who haven’t suffered it, simply trying to paint a picture of just how extreme an undertaking a day trip from Beijing to Shenzhen really is. I hit the big 50 a few days ago and, on the flight back, as my watched ticked on past midnight, I can honestly say that I was feeling every day of my age. The 30 minute wait for a taxi at 2am in the morning at Beijing’s showcase terminal three, did nothing to improve my well-being score.

But, although the day was exhausting, there had been a number of comforting positives. As I waited for my nocturnal taxi in one of Beijing’s more disorderly queues, I reflected that the day could have been much, much worse:

I had arrived at Shenzhen airport at 11.30 that morning. The driver, who had been kindly sent by the company who had invited me to Shenzhen to speak at at their global marketing conference, was there to meet me at the gate.

We shook hands. “Where’s your luggage?” he asked. “I only have my computer and camera,” I explained. “But you’ve come from Beijing… won’t you be staying the night?” I told him that I was booked on the last flight back, and that I would have to make a sharp exit from the conference hall as soon as I had finished my bit. Mr Wei laughed, “It’s a long flight to Beijing, you’ll be tired”.

I followed Mr Wei to the car park.

I saw it when I turned the corner.

No! It couldn’t be...

...We were walking straight to it and there was nothing else in sight. How would I be able to live this down? Generally, I really don’t mind what car I ride in. I say generally, because there are a few exceptions. On top of the small list of cars I would prefer not to be seen in – let alone pull into the headquarters of a major corporation in – is the Porche Cayenne. I have disliked the car – if it really is a car – since I first saw it in China (there were two of them, in fact, parked outside neighbouring houses in one of Shanghai’s swankiest parts of town).

Don’t get me wrong, I do quite like Porsches – proper ones that is, the ones that look, sound, and handle like sports cars. But, this thing? What were they thinking?

Jeremy Clarkson, the writer and presenter on Britain’s number one (in fact, only) series about cars and driving, Top Gear, was so under-impressed with its looks that he was moved to say, “Honestly, I have seen more attractive gangrenous wounds than this. It has the sex appeal of a camel with gingivitis.” Mr Clarkson then went on, in his Sunday Times column, to describe it as the the car that had drowned in “Lake Ugly”.

Okay, I know it’s been successful – particularly so in China, where the majority of Porsches sold are Cayennes – but that doesn’t make it any less… now what word would I pick…. yes, any less crass.

Crassus, the latin parent of the word, adds that bit more to the description: thick, dense, fat, heavy. Students of Roman history (as well as those, like me, who bothered to look him up in Wikipedia) will know that Marcus Licinius Crassus was the wealthiest man in the Empire. He impressed people (most famously, Julius Ceasar) with his colossal political 'donations', but not with his taste.

Crassus was wealthier than any mortal being, but his lack of refinement and sophistication made him, well, a bit of a laughing stock among those who knew a priceless Roman urn from a cheap Greek one.

Taste in luxury products among those who can afford them has moved on a lot since 2005, when “unskilled rich” property tychoons were known to travel from Shenzhen to Hong Kong to buy the most expensive items in the shops – without knowing anything much about the brands they were buying. Vertu, the draw-droppingly expensive, and some would say ridiculous-looking diamond-studded mobile phone, was (and for some still is) high up on the list of luxuries to carry back to Shenzhen.

In 2006, the first year that the Luxury SUV (sports utility vehicle) category was included in the Hurun survey of the “best of the best” (luxury brands), the Porsche Cayenne claimed top spot. The people from Porsche were invited to deliver another acceptance speech the following year for the same range of vehicles.

However, in 2008, the tide turned. The luxury-category influencers who were surveyed by Hurun, voted instead for the BMW X, which also carried off the title in 2009. In 2010, it was the Audi Q7 that won the respondents’ vote. Cayenne sales have continued to increase year after year, but in recent years the rise has as not been as fast as category sales.

The important driver, if you’ll forgive the pun, is that the Audi Q7 stands for “new wealth” and “new ideas about how to enjoy your wealth”, which has struck a chord with the New Wave of China’s rich (and also those among the waves gone by who are keen to go with the flow of the changing tide).

The New Wave (the biggest, most powerful wave yet) prefer the refinement and understatement of the Audi Q7 to the in-yer-face brooding presence of the Porsche Cayenne. The extent of the swing, instigated by the influencers – those on the crest of the New Wave – is such that full-year 2010 sales of the Q7 are likely to exceed that of the Cayenne. Back in the car park, I stared at the grotesque Cayenne and resignedly shook my head.

But, just as I was working out how to explain my hypocrisy to my friends, Mr Wei ran ahead of me and seemed to disappear behind the Cayenne, from where I heard a door being manually unlocked.

I was delighted to discover that, hidden behind the Cayenne, was a white van. And it was not just any white van… it was a mianbao che ['bread van'] no less. A 'bread van' my not be my first choice of chauffeur-driven transportation. But, given a choice of it, a Beijing taxi, an Audi Q7, or a Porsche Cayenne, the bread van would certainly be my second-pick every time.

And, in case you are wondering, the Beijing taxi would take third spot... even if I had to wait 30 minutes for it at two in the morning.

I arrived at the hotel reception at about 6pm. I was exhausted, but still very much on the kind of high you can only get from traversing one of the most incredible regions on the planet Earth. The receptionist looked pleased to see me. Until, that is, she realised I didn't have a Tibet entry permit. "Don't have one?!" she said, with the wide-eyed look of someone who'd just had a premonition that a tall stranger from a far away land would be a bringer of trouble and strife. "No, I don't have one," I repeated. "This is my third visit to Lhasa, and my fifth visit to Tibet and this is the first time anyone's asked to see a Tibet entry permit."

"But you must have one to be here!" She was beginning to raise her voice, so I thought it would be better to employ ice-cool calmness: "It can't be true that I must have one to be here because I am here and I don't have one..." I was beginning to sound as well as feel like Alice following her arrival in Wonderland (same rude welcome, but at least she only had to fall down a rabbit hole to get there).

However, despite my good intention to hold it together, my sleep-deprived mind wasn't in calm mode and I could feel my composure ebbing away with every word of my explanation: "... I can show you my passport, my visa, my Chinese driving licence, and my Beijing to Lhasa train ticket – which, I might add, was checked numerous times by numerous people on the train, and was even checked by two policeman before I crossed into Tibet. Two policeman who said absolutely nothing to me about needing a permit to be here.

"I can show you all of those things, but I cannot show you a Tibet entry permit, because I DON"T HAVE ONE. I have absolutely no desire to be here if I am not wanted here, so..." I the realised that I had said the "so" without knowing what the "so" was, so I prolonged the the "oooo" long enough to think of a suitably dramatic punch line. "...does this mean I need to sleep in the street and get the morning train back to Beijing?". She tilted her head to one side and then to the other, as if sizing up the situation, before telling me that she needed to call her boss.

I awoke not knowing where I was – the memories of the past three days swirling around in a bewildering montage. I then heard the yapping dogs that had kept me awake half the night, which I found strangely reassuring because the sound at least reminded me that I was in a hotel room in Lhasa. I then remembered that today was the day I would return to the mountain nunnery I had visited in January 2008.

That time, it had taken a helpful concierge ten minutes to find a driver who knew the way. This time it would take 15 minutes. The same receptionist who had eventually given me my room key after her boss had confirmed I could stay, kindly offered to find the "right" taxi for me, because “Only a few drivers know how to get there”. I asked her how she knew which drivers would know the way. “Only locals know the way there,” she said matter-of-factly. “And how do you spot a local driver,” I enquired. “Oh, you can just tell,” she responded dismissively.

Most of the taxis were full. But then an “empty” taxi – a shiny new Brilliance (made in Shenyang) – slowed down, the driver not unreasonably thinking that we wanted to hire him. The receptionist waved him away. Clearly, not the “right” one, I thought. Several more “empty” Brilliance taxis were allowed to pass by, before the receptionist spotted one that she thought would be able to take me to the mountain-nunnery. A battered old VW taxi was flagged down. My helper spoke to the driver in Tibetan, before confirming to me that this driver would indeed take me where I wanted to go (2 hours away from Lhasa), wait for 4 hours, and return to Lhasa – all for a price I thought was reasonable.

Thanking the receptionist for her trouble, I climbed in to the front passenger seat. This could have been – I would later realise – a fatal mistake. The driver, an early-thirty-something, sporting a Kappa tracksuit top, nodded a hello. It didn’t take me long to work out that this was a driver in a hurry.

Before I had shut the door, he started to perform a G-force inducing U-turn. This set the mood for the rest of the nail-biting journey. I deduced that – let’s call him Mr T – had a worryingly high level of speedosterone, a chemical that seems to affect more than a few thirty-somethings the world over. The reality was he was driving a battered VW, but that didn’t stop Mr T driving on and sometimes beyond the limit. Everything that was ahead of us didn’t stay ahead of us for very long. That was until we encountered a Toyota Landcruiser. Mr T raced up behind it, slammed the gearbox into third and, with the engine shrieking its protest, was just about to execute an overtaking manoeuvre on a blind bend that would have been logged by accident investigators as “travelling at least 30km over the speed limit”, when I screamed out: “Wu Jin!!”

Mr T hadn’t noticed the WJ number plate (he had been too busy reciting a Buddhist sutra as he passed a prayer-flag bedecked shrine, while talking on his mobile phone to one of his mates). The WJ signified that the car in front was not just any Toyota, it was a Toyota carrying Wu Jin – an armed-police response unit. “Oops,” said Mr T, as he lifted off the accelerator, “I didn’t spot that one”.

"You're going where?!" asked a friend. "Lhasa," I repeated. "How long does the flight take?" he asked. "I don't know, I'm taking the train," I replied. After I had gone on to tell him that I would be sitting on a "hard seat" for more than 45 hours, he wished me luck. Not that I wouldn't prefer a bed of course, but all the "sleeper" tickets had already been sold by the time I got around to deciding that I would return to Tibet. On the plus side (and I am sure you can understand why I think it's an incredibly small 'plus'), the "hard seat" for the close-to 2,500 mile train journey costs only 389 yuan (or the equivalent of about US$58 or 37 pounds sterling).

The last time I travelled there, I took the same "Sky Train", the T27, which departed from Beijing West Railway Station at 9.30pm on New Year's Day, 2008. Then, I had been lucky enough to get a "hard sleeper" ticket – my preferred style of travel during my 35-day 10,603 mile (about 17 thousand km) rail journey around China (click here if you would like to see where else I went). The 4,096km ride was so exhilarating that I swore to do the same trip again one day. As well as offering a wonderful opportunity to listen to dozens of people talk about themselves and about their reason for making the arduous trip, the backdrop to these conversations is simply awe-inspiring:

The shift in altitude from Beijing West railway station at about 35 metres above sea level (masl) to the end of the line at Lhasa station at 3641 masl (just short of 12,000 feet) is ear-popping enough, but it is the final two sections between Golmud, station "number 6", and Lhasa that are most dizzying. 80 per cent of the track from Golmud to Lhasa is at more than 4,000 masl, including 550km of which has been sunk into permafrost. The beauty of the early-evening arrival time into Lhasa is that you can spend the entire "Day 3" of the journey enjoying eye-poppingly wonderful vistas.

The highest point of the journey (indeed, the highest point of any rail journey in the world) is reached a couple of hours before Nagqu, station "number 7". The height on the altimeter to watch out for is 5,072 masl (16,640 feet), which signals that you have reached the Tanggalu Pass, the boundary marker of Qinghai and the Tibet Autonomous Region. From here, it's downhill (about a vertical mile) to Lhasa.

All of this assumes, of course, that I am allowed to cross into Tibet. Most websites that profess to be experts on tourism into the area tell you that you will not be allowed in without a special travel permit (the process for getting one is a long and uncertain one I understand). On my last attempt, I managed to get all the way there and back without one (the hefty price of which includes, by the way, an "official guide"). No one is quite sure if there has been a tightening of the unwritten rules since my last visit...

Well, there's only one way to find out...

It rained heavily all day today in Beijing. The first cold front of the autumn had also blown in air that was 14 degrees centigrade cooler than the highs of recent days. But the inclement weather mattered not a jot to the crowds who flocked to the Apple store in Sanlitun Village. Hundreds had waited in the pouring rain for the 8am opening – that signalled the long-awaited launch of iPad in China (Apple's other shops in China would open at 10am).

The first in the queue was Han Ziwen, a bookshop owner, who had – according to a shop assistant I spoke with – been queuing since Tuesday. Photos of him, proudly wearing his "I BUY IPAD NO1" shirt, and holding aloft his brace of iPads (the most that one person is allowed to purchase at any one time) are already all over the Internet.

It seemed that – like the beaming Mr Han – everyone leaving the shop with an iPad was struggling to contain their excitement. "Which one did you buy?" I asked a man in his mid 30s, who was doing his best, but failing badly to contain a cat that got the cream look. "64!" He said with a grin that was as wide as a well-fed Cheshire cat's. The 64GB is the top of the range model that is selling for 5,588 yuan (about US$825). "How does it feel to have one?" I asked. Words, it seemed, were not enough to express his excitement. Instead, he punched the air jubilantly.

With that, I went inside and waited for one of the many demos to become available. After 15 minutes, my turn came. My first port of call was the ebook application. There were two pre-loaded books to choose from. I chose Winnie the Pooh – a favourite of mine. I had never flicked through an ebook before (as in turning the pages with one's fingers), and at once I realised that the pundits who are forecasting a serious decline in the sales of physical books are likely to be proved right. Suddenly, Tigger – whom you may remember is "bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy", and "Fun, fun, fun, FUN" – pounced off the page and appeared in front of me.

"Hi! Can I help!?" pleaded an eager-faced Chong, an Apple 'helper' (I can't bring myself to call him a salesperson, because it never felt like he was trying to sell me anything). I thought for a moment before asking him to show me how to use the Wi-Fi. In two shakes of a Tigger's tail, I was connected to my requested site. He then told me all about the nifty device that for 80 yuan a month would keep me connected to the internet anywhere in China (rendering redundant any concerns about the China iPads lack of 3G compatibility). I was struck by Chong's incredible energy and unadulterated love of what he was doing.

He then spotted I had a camera with me. "Hey!" he said, "The iPad is great for photographers! He then explained how the card reader that's compatible with the iPad ("you can buy one upstairs") could enable me to travel light on my journeys around China. I thanked him for the advice, and he bounced away with a cheery, "Shout me over if you need any more help!".

No sooner had I got back to the iPad, Chong bounded back to my side. "Hey!" he said, "I've just thought of something you'll really like!" He then picked up the iPad, and pressed a Google Earth button that pinpointed the Apple store in Sanlitun (homing in on the Wi-Fi signal I guessed). "Now, wait for this," he said, with the aplomb of a conjurer who was supremely confident of his ability to pull a rabbit out of his hat. "Enable compass!" he said theatrically as he pressed something on the iPad. "And away you go!" The map on the iPad was then showing me that it was pointed in the direction of Gongti Bei Lu, due south of the shop. I have this facility on my mobile device, but I must admit that it is far more digestible in tablet form.

"How long have you been doing this job?" I asked. "One year," he replied. "Before that I was in the education business in Guangzhou, but I just had to come to Beijing to work with Apple." Chong was on a roll: "I LOVE it!" he exuded. "I LOVE introducing people to new things, and showing them how simple it is to get more from technology. Apple is so simple to use," he continued, "Anyone can benefit from using it." I was dumbfounded. I had worked with Nokia in China for 5 years, and it was as if the Nokia "human technology" mantra had been given a new lease of life.

I thanked Chong again, who shook my hand again before bouncing over to one of the other demo tables. With people of his calibre; with such a pleasurable browsing experience; and with technology this cool – there is no doubt that the brand will go from strength to strength in China. What's more, Apple's long-standing barrier for many – pricing – (which has always been the brand's double-edged sword) is much less of an obstacle than it was before 8am this morning.

I stepped back from the table, gesturing to the mid-twenty something woman – who was standing over my shoulder sensing that I was about to move away from the table – to take my place. "Thanks!" she said. After a few minutes chatting I realised that the iPad really is a game-changer for Apple in China:

Ms Wang sums up the magnitude of the shift that Apple has pulled off: "I never thought I'd be able to buy an Apple computer, but I now realise I can buy their very latest model for under 4,000 yuan!!"

I bet, though, that when Ms Wang (and millions more like her) has played for 30 minutes on the iPad, and had a chat with Chong or one of his colleagues about her options, the 1,600 yuan more that's required to buy the 64GB model (versus the 16GB) will – all of a sudden – seem to be quite a small price to pay.

[You are welcome to click HERE to view my in-store photos from today's visit.]

I looked at the headline again. What do they mean by “Chinese Brand City” I asked myself? Has Dalian been awarded the title of the number one city brand in China, or is Dalian the number one city for Chinese brands? The answer, according to the 12th August China Daily article, written by Guo Changdong and Ren Ruqin, is the former – Dalian has won the accolade of number one city brand in China.

The article states: “The committee [made up of representatives from the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the Brand China Industry Union] praised Dalian’s efforts in promoting itself and building a culture with romantic and trendy characteristics. Dalian has done much work in industrial restructuring, and forming a liveable city environment. The rapid economic development helps Dalian to build its brand image.”

Well there’s a lucky bounce, I thought to myself, as Dalian is my final port of call on a nine day tour that has included six Chinese cities. A great opportunity, then, to compare and contrast Dalian’s development with that of Shenzhen, Shantou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Nanjing (from where I had flown). As well as the 6-city development differences I am also keen to see if I can spot any changes since my last visit here in 2007. My first impressions, I have to say, were not positive.

Maybe I am staying in the ‘wrong’ part of town this time – in the far east of Zhongshan Road, the main thoroughfare that dissects the older part of the city. Or maybe it was a bad day in terms of pollution or humidity. Or perhaps I was suffering from travel fatigue. Whatever it was, my three mile walk down the entire length of Zhongshan Road left me thinking that central Dalian was looking… well… more than a little tired.

However, GDP per capita (73,134 yuan) and urban income per capita figures (19,090 yuan) in 2009 all show very healthy year-on-year gains. And all other key economic indicators show similarly robust growth. As I was puzzling over the conundrum, I remembered that I had spent the bulk of my time on my last visit away from the central area. In 2007, I had toured the Dalian Development Area (DDA) – the shiny part of town as well as Dalian’s engine for economic growth. The DDA is so important to China’s economic development that it is controlled by China’s state council in Beijing, not by Liaoning’s provincial government.

So, could it be that my impression of Dalian in 2007 had been skewed by a number of positive experiences (which included interviewing a Ferrari salesperson, who was the personification of Dalian’s reputation of a “nothing is impossible” pioneering city... click here to read the article) and that my observations this time could not and should not be compared with my 2007 impressions?

I went to a bar to find out what the locals think: Mr Cao, the bar owner, had no idea about Dalian’s “best city” award. He also had quite a negative view of Dalian’s current economic position. “Things have not been great since Bo Xilai was transferred away,” he told me.

[Bo Xilai, a charismatic and popular figure, was transferred to Chongqing in 2007 as party secretary to sort out corruption in what is technically the world’s biggest city. Think of Clint Eastward riding in to town chewing a cheroot and you get some idea of how the media portrayed him and how the general public have feted him. But, before that, he was Minister of Commerce at state level (2004-2007). He worked in a provincial position prior to that. The truth of the matter is that Bo Xilai’s seven year tenure as major of Dalian came to an end on January 2001. So, as good as the good old days were, it’s a tad unfair to blame Bo Xilai‘s successors for the perceived woes of the past two or three years.]

Now thoroughly confused I continued walking down Zhongshan Road. A night venue with blaring music sucked me inside. 30 minutes was long enough for my eardrums, as well as being long enough to convince me that Dalian young people are indeed every bit as upbeat as I remember them. Despite the cracks in the pavements, the run-down alleyways, and ancient tram system, Dalian is still one of the most happening cities in China. If the progressiveness of its young people is anything to go by, Dalian city is right up there vying for the title of China premier league champions. Which reminded me to check out the evaluation criteria for the recent “China Brand City” contest:

After an hour of fruitless searching, I stumbled on an article also in the People’s Daily (which cited an article in the China Daily) that succeeded only to muddy the water. It was essentially a copy of the article I referred to earlier, except that the winner was Hangzhou, not Dalian (which was listed as one of the nine runners-up, along with Qingdao, Quanzhou, Changchun, Wenzhou, Shenzhen, Changsha, Wuxi and Tianjin Binhai New area). The Hangzhou city website was also trumpeting the success in the event that “is billed as the largest and most influential annual competition about city brands in the nation”.

I then wasted another hour trying to get to the bottom of this mystery, only to hit a dead end at the Brand China Industry Union’s website http://brand.brandcn.com/ which didn’t include any reference to the event that it had co-hosted. Then, with my patience running out, I hit on an important lead. The Chinese government’s Intellectual Property Protection in China website reports that:

“On August 8, the 10th Brand China Summit hosted by China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and Brand China Industry Union was held… Over 2000 governmental officials, representatives from renowned enterprises, brand experts, brand managers and media participated in the summit. Vice Chairman of both Brand China Industry Union and All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce Sun Xiaohua made a speech at the summit representing the host. He said Chinese brands have met so many difficulties in the process of internationalization, with much loss; although this gave us bitter lessons, this is a must in the brand development. Brand construction is like the growth of a person; we will face confusion and twitch, then span and progress. These are all necessary. Rome was not built within one day. It needs enterprises' enduring efforts and investments, as well as pure-hearted expression and charm release of the brands.”

"Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice. This event was clearly a Chinese-brand event (in line with Brand China Industry Union’s modus operandi) and not a “city-brand” event. What’s more, according to the government website, the winner was neither Dalian, nor even Hangzhou… but Wenzhou… the city that is widely recognised as being a stronghold for Chinese brands. The article points out that “Wenzhou has 203 China Top Brands”.

So, the next time, you are asked to name China’s “best city”, please be sure to clarify whether you are being asked to name the best "Chinese city-brand” or best “Chinese-brand city”. And then, just to be on the safe side, agree the assessment criteria. You will then be in a position to name your top three cities.

“How much is that one?” I asked. Ms Lin, the sales assistant, went to look at the price tag.

“It’s 169 thousand yuan [about US$25,000]” she told me without blinking.

“What does it do for that price?” I enquired.

She took a deep breath, before reeling off a spec list that seemed to have more to do with a sensory experience centre than a treadmill. While burning off the calories, the Excite – Technogym’s top of the range model – also enables you to watch TV, listen to your preferred music, and even smell your favourite smell (thanks to its aroma diffuser).

“Where’s it made?” I asked. Ms Lin handed me a book that had a smiling Nerio Alessandri – the founder and chairman of Technogym – on the front cover.

“Italian?” I guessed. A nod of the head signalled that I had guessed right.

I leafed through the thick tome to glean a few facts (and I would later check the company’s website to find out a few more):

The company – the world’s second largest manufacturer of fitness equipment – started trading in 1975, but it didn’t make a sale in China until 1996, when it sold two pieces of equipment to China’s National Space Administration, no less, for use in its training centre.

According to Marco Treggiari, the managing director of the company’s Chinese operation (reported by Bloomberg), Technogym now has sales offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, from where it has sold equipment to about 400 gyms (out of the estimated 3,000 that have sprung up in China) and 210 five-star hotels. Mr Treggiari has estimated that sales in China this year will increase by up to 30 per cent to US$18 million.

“Do you have anything cheaper?” I asked.

Ms Lin took me over to the large selection of Shu Hua treadmills, and pointed to the SH-5167, the second-best seller. “This one is 2,980 yuan [US$440],” she told me.

“And the best seller?” I asked.

“That’s the SH-5198, it sells at 4,986 yuan [US$736]”. Ms Lin didn’t want to say how many, but there’s no doubt that she sells many times more of this product than she does of the Excite – of which she has sold “four or five” in the 18 months she has worked in the shop.

Shu Hua, which employs a thousand people, is China’s biggest producer of excercise equipment. The company, which was established in 1996 – the same year that Technogym began to blaze its own trail in China – is based in Jinjiang, also in Fujian, less than an hour’s drive to the north of Xiamen. Jinjiang is a city that has become synonymous with the sports industry:

It is reckoned that something in the order of 20 per cent of sports shoes sold in the world are manufactured there – made by a significant proportion of the several hundred thousand migrant workers who have flocked to the city in recent years. And more of more of those Jinjiang-made training shoes are pounding the treadmill machines made by Shu Hua.

Shu Hua’s sales rocketed after it invested heavily in advertising campaigns featuring Tian Liang, its “Brand Ambassador”. Crowned China’s “Diving Prince” following his success at the Athens’ Olympics, Tian Liang was a powerful spokesperson for the brand. Even the controversy surrounding the SH A5210 model which, according to the Beijing Youth Daily, failed a Shanghai government quality inspection, didn’t dampen the enthusiasm that had been generated.

Zhang Weilian, chairman of Shu Hua, speaks with evangelical zeal about the company and its mission: “My dream is for every Chinese family to have a quality treadmill,” he says. Su Hua’s brand vision is equally lofty: “Chuanbo jiankang, zaofu renlei [promoting healthiness for the benefit of humanity]”

I was puzzled. I could understand why treadmill sales in many Chinese cities had sky-rocketed (in the many cities with high levels of pollution, or extreme temperatures and humidity), but why would a fitness-enthusiast living in Xiamen – one of China’s most “livable cities” – prefer a treadmill to a run on the beach?

I decided to go to the beach to find out.

It was late afternoon when I arrived at my favourite Xiamen beach area, which just happens to be near to the giant “One country, two systems” sign that faces the Taiwan-controlled islands, a few miles away. The temperature was in the mid 20s, humidity was bearable, and there was a light sea breeze. In short, lovely conditions for a jog (I am advised).

However, in the two hours I spent there, I saw only one “runner”. A man in his 60s who was jogging so slowly that people were passing him at walking speed – that was until I tried to have a word with him, at which point he found a second wind from somewhere and bolted away like an Olympic sprinter.

It was then that I realised that I should have listened to Ms Lin, who told me that Xiamen people didn’t like running in public because “It wasn’t convenient”, which I took to be a euphemism for “They feel a bit embarrassed”.

Whatever the reason, this is good news for the likes of Su Hua and Technogym. It’s also good news for companies across the Taiwan Straits. In particular it is very good news for Johnson Health Tech Co, Asia’s largest manufacturer of fitness equipment, which markets its excercise equipment under four brands: Matrix, Vision, Horizon, and Johnson.

The Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou visited the company earlier this month. He used the visit to impress on a wider audience the benefits of the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), which is designed to bolster cross-straits economic cooperation by removing trade barriers and increasing investment. On the 15th August Mr Ma said of Johnson Health Tech:

"One of its products, a portable treadmill that can be folded and stored under a bed, is innovative and representative of Taiwan's competitiveness".

As far as the likely impact of the agreement on Taiwanese businesses such as Johnson Heath Tech is concerned, the Taiwanese president, who is a keen jogger, employed a running analogy: After likening Taiwan's trade barriers to iron shackles that retarded a jogger's stride, Mr Ma went on to tell the Focus Taiwan News Channel that "The signing of the ECFA is like giving that jogger a pair of lightweight sneakers that would help him to run fast”.

However, as with so many of the tangibles that will accrue from the ECFA, Johnson Health Tech’s stowable treadmill won’t be staring you in the face. For thousands of satisfied mainland customers, though, it will be a daily reminder that cross-straits cooperation is picking up pace.

The state-controlled media called it the Tour of the South.

Or at least they did when they got around to reporting it, two months after the Tour has been and gone.

At the start of 1992, influential conservatives in Beijing who were ideologically opposed to the economic reforms that Deng Xiaoping had pioneered in the 80s – fearing that those reforms would undermine the political status quo – continued to press their foot down on the economic-development brake pedal.

Deng, believing that “Slow growth equals stagnation and even retrogression”, decided to do everything in his power to reenergise the reforms. Instead of confronting his critics in Beijing, the 86 year-old master-strategist climbed on board a train and headed south to the cities that had been the drivers of China’s economic development in the 80s, where he would urge provincial and local governments to speed up the pace of economic development.

His message was simple: Caution would be disastrous for the country; only ‘boldness’ would result in a bright future. Or, extending the driving analogy, the message was something akin to: Don’t even think about using the brake, just put your foot on the accelerator and push it down as far as it will go.

The most significant stage of Deng’s Tour of the South was his visit to Shenzhen, which in 1980 had been declared China’s first Special Economic Zone (The thirtieth anniversary of the declaration is tomorrow). Shenzhen was the jewel in the crown of China’s economic development in the 80s, and had very much become the city that developers in other Chinese cities had looked to for ideas.

And so, at 9am on 19th January 1992, Deng Xiaoping’s train pulled in to Shenzhen railway station. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Over the years, millions of migrant entrepreneurs have answered Deng’s call to turn Shenzhen into the most vibrant and prosperous city in China by putting their ‘migration anxiety’ to the back of their minds and focussing, instead, on the carrot of future wealth.

I am pleased to report that 30 years’ on from Shenzhen’s opening up, and 18 years after Deng’s world-changing Tour of the South, the Dengesque spirit of ‘fortune favours the brave’ is as vibrant as it ever was:

“Excuse me. Would you take our photograph?”

I looked around and saw that a young woman was trying to catch my attention by waving a small digital camera in my direction. I was on my way to a meeting, but had enough time to oblige. She wanted me to take a photograph of her and her friend with a picture of Deng in the background (poster-size photos of Deng taken during his 1992 visit here are dotted around town).

“Where are you from,” the same woman asked me after I had pressed the shutter release button. “I’m from Beijing,” I replied. “And you two?” I asked.

“We’re from Nanchang in Jiangxi province. Have you been there?”. They were both surprised to find out that I had. With the ice now well and truly broken I asked what had brought them to Shenzhen.

“I’ve come here to do business,” replied the woman with the long hair, who was clearly the spokesperson for both of them.

“My mame is Mingming and this is Xixi, she is my best friend – I call her my daughter!”. They both laughed at the idea (Xixi is 6 months younger than the 20 year-old Mingming). Xixi had to get back to Nanchang in three days’ time for the start of the new university year.

“So you’re going back to your hometown to study electrical engineering, while Mingming is staying in Shenzhen to make her fortune,” I joked.

“That’s right!” exclaimed Mingming with a glint in her eye… “I’ve come here to sell clothes on Taobao.”

I am well aware of the popularity of Taobao (often referred to as the “Chinese eBay”) and was keen to find out how Mingming was going to make money from it. Her plan – to sell Shenzhen-made clothes and fashion accessories to buyers in Africa – was nothing short of genius: No stock, no overheads, and no risk. All she had to do was to tailor the stock and the offer to the needs of the target audience she had in mind, and then develop relationships with the right suppliers (people who would let her post photos of their stock onto her Taobao page).

I surmised that most people she approached would be keen on the proposition, on the basis that – even if they were already selling on Taobao – the business that Mingming would be generating for them would be incremental. A true ‘Win-Win’ relationship no less. I congratulated Mingming on her enterprising and well thought through business plan.

“But won’t you miss Xixi and your family back in Nanchang?” I asked.

“Of course I will,” she replied, “But they understand that I have to grasp this opportunity”.

It’s as if Mingming (her name means ‘shining’) has been inspired by the words of Deng Xiaoping, who said: “An important experience of Shenzhen is the courage to make breakthroughs. Without a path-breaking spirit, the ‘venturing’ spirit, morale and energy, it is impossible to blaze a trail and to create a new undertaking.”

If you would like to read some more of Deng’s quotes from his 1992 visit to Shenzhen, you are welcome to click here.

Mao Zedong loved the place so much that he was moved to write a poem about it. Deng Xiaoping often brought his family here for their summer holidays.

More than a few state leaders have “grace and favour” homes here. Many of the big decisions that have shaped modern China have been made here, not in Beijing (the National Congress pre-meetings were held here for years).

And numerous Beijingers have spent at least a weekend here in the summer and told millions about it.

Of course! It could only be Beidaihe, a small town on the coast of Hebei province.

If you were the marketing director of Beidaihe’s tourism board, you could be forgiven for thinking that the job has already been done, and for putting up the “gone for a stroll along one of Beidaihe’s famous sandy beaches” sign on your office door.

Most visitors who make the 280km trip from Beijing (in three and a bit hours – if you’re lucky – via the G1 expressway; or two hours via one of the many scheduled high-speed trains from Beijing’s central railway station) head for the beach. And today, a Saturday with temperatures here forecast to be ten degrees cooler than in the oven that is Beijing, Beidaihe is bulging with cars with “jing” number plates and local taxis ferrying Beijingers from the railway station.

The most popular stretch of beach is the Tiger Rocks section, which costs 8 yuan to enter. Here, people are packed together so tightly that the only sound that can be heard is the incessant Beijinghua-accented chatter of excited holidaymakers (with a sprinkling of Russian).

If you have come to Beidaihe in search of the sound of the sea gently lapping onto the shore, then you have chosen the wrong beach. But if, like me, you’re here for a bucket and spade day with a young child, then it’s the place to be.

And if you’re not quite at the bucket and spade life stage then, worry not, there are plenty of other beach things you can do with your friends (see photo). Whatever activity you have in mind, however, make sure it doesn’t involve swinging a cat – there simply isn’t enough room.

I was determined to get it from the horse’s mouth as it were – and hear why people, who live in a packed city of about 20 million, endure jammed motorways or a crowded train to be on a beach that would make a sardine feel claustrophobic. As is often the case in China, the truth is stranger than fiction:

Mr Hu, a salesperson who worked in Chaoyang, Beijing’s central business district, put his finger on it: “Here, I really feel free from the pressure,” said Mr Hu, as he took another swig from the bottle of Yanjing beer (Beijing’s favourite beer brand). “I’m free to do what I like, when I like, without worrying about work or my clients… I can be myself.”

I mused that the communal sense of this – thousands of people in the same boat (or, in this case, on the same beach), with most of their clothes off (stripped of the masquerade of suits and ties… and left with the essence of the “real them” as it were) somehow made the feeling of “liberation” that bit more intense.

Mr Hu offered me a swig of his beer, as well as inviting me over to meet his mates from the city. Alas, I had my bucket and spade duty to get back to, so had to decline.

It was a tempting offer though. As I was walking back through the crowds, I came to the conclusion that wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, and whatever clothes they’re wearing, there are some things about Beijingers that will never change: their friendliness and wonderful generosity.

The “walking green man” was suddenly replaced by a static red one. The woman stopped abruptly. The boy at her side, who had his eyes on other things, continued to walk forward. The secure grip of the vigilant woman tightened as she pulled the boy back from the road and the menacing cars that had already begun to speed by.

"Look!" scolded the woman, gesturing to the cars that had threatened to claim yet another young life. The boy was looking, but not at the cars that were now whizzing past his left ear. He continued looking to his right.

“Beautiful,” said the boy. “How Cool!”.

I glanced over at the subject of his gaze. He was looking at a motorbike. A big one with extravagant wing mirrors glinting in the sun. I prefer bikes without engines, so was more impressed by the boy's reaction than by the machine’s presence.

"Harley Davidson?" I asked myself. Although, on closer inspection, it didn’t quite have the “Easy Rider” look of a Harley, which is quite a rare sight in these parts, but not quite as rare as hen’s teeth (Regular readers of this column – both of you – may remember that, several months ago, I wrote about a visit I made to a Harley dealership in Beijing.) The boy – who clearly knows more about motorbike brands than I do – put the record straight: “Jincheng!” he exclaimed.

The lights changed, the bike was about to turn left, so I moved back several yards to be in a position to capture the scene I was witnessing (see photo).

Jincheng had been a hot topic several months ago on Chinese blogs and forums, following the Nanjing company’s participation in this year’s Dakar Rally. The motorsport event – which moved from Africa to South America (Chile and Argentina) in 2009 – is considered to be the world’s most gruelling motor race.

The move to South America has made it even tougher – not least because five of the 14 rally stages of the 2010 race passed through Chile’s Atacama desert, which is purported to be the driest place on Earth.

Jincheng sponsored two riders in the 2010 event – Su Wenmin and Wei Guanghui, both of whom managed to complete the 9,574 km course (despite a number of mishaps along the way). They finished 75th and 82nd respectively (out of 161 entrants in the class).

The sponsorship of the team is a statement of Jincheng’s global ambitions. According to Dakar.com, the event’s official website, news from the rally was seen by a staggering 2.2 billion people. As well as an avalanche of Internet coverage, the 2010 race was broadcast by 80 TV channels to 189 countries. Jincheng sells 600,000 motorbikes a year, spread across more than a third of those countries, according to its home website. The company’s country websites – from Africa to South America – trumpet its participation in the event.

It’s impossible to know how many boys in Argentina, Chile, Nigeria, or South Africa would react as the boy in Beijing did. Not many I would suspect. But, there’s no doubt that Jincheng are going out of their way to make an impression and to write a new chapter in their illustrious history... In 1949, they maintained the aircraft that flew over Chairman Mao’s head during the ceremony at Tiananmen, at which the founding of the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed.

These days the sound of a Jincheng engine can be heard by tens of millions of people in 70 countries… as well by the unsuspecting llamas in Chile’s Atacama desert A source of pride, no doubt, for many of the Chinese boys who, one day, will be looking to buy the bike of their dreams.

“Will you go to see the film?” I asked Ms Zhou. “Probably not, it would be too depressing,” she told me earnestly. The memories of 28th July 1976 have cut just too deep. 34 years ago, Ms Zhou’s world was rocked by the earthquake that struck 11km beneath the centre of the city of Tangshan in Hebei province. She relives the horror of those 20 seconds: “I remember the time, it was 3.28am. I was jolted awake. First the floor went up and down [Ms Zhou mimes the violent up-and-down action with dramatic movements of her right arm]. Then I was bounced from side to side [she jolts her body from one side to the other as if it is being repeatedly bounced off imaginary walls]. It was impossible to move forwards. I couldn’t even get to the door”.

Ms Zhou and her family were among the lucky ones. They were far enough from the epicentre (about 60 miles away) and, just as critically, they lived in a house that was sturdily built. The people in the centre of Tangshan were not so lucky. Photographs of the aftermath show scenes that are chillingly similar to those taken after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. The Tangshan earthquake, however, yielded a destructive power (at least 7.8 on the Richter scale) that was 400 times greater than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, according to the UN Global Programme for the Integration of Public Administration and the Science of Disasters. The official number of fatalities is 242,419, which is far fewer than the provincial government’s initial estimate of 650,000 (about one third of the then-population of Tangshan).

Ms Zhou continues her story: “The people at my town’s earthquake monitoring station knew that the earthquake was in Tangshan. Very soon afterwards, a medical team on their way to Tangshan came to collect my father, who was a medical doctor. We had all gathered in our garden, well away from the house, when they arrived. Later that day, at 6pm, another strong earthquake struck Tangshan. We were all so worried about my father because we knew he would have been right on top of it. That second quake killed thousands of rescue workers. The second quake also destroyed the bridge that connected my town to Tangshan. It was a long time before we were able to find out what had happened to Father. At last we learned that he and his team had survived the second quake. …He was alive and well and still doing his best to help some of the [estimated 640,000] injured people. When he came back months later, he told us something about what he had seen. I will never forget those stories.”

Of the countless stories told by the thousands of people who did live to tell the tale, one of those stories is – a generation later – being told to many millions of people:

Aftershock is the story of the Tangshan earthquake told from the perspective of a survivor whose mother had condemned her to death by deciding to save her brother instead of her (the mother had been told by a rescue worker that the slab of concrete that was pinning the two siblings down had to be moved for one of them to be saved, but that the movement of the slab would kill the other). The girl hears her mum choosing to save her brother but – unknown to her mother – she later manages to escape the scene.

It is a story of reconciliation and of hope as much as it is of recriminations and despair. The film’s critics say that many important questions have not been asked, let alone answered. The most obvious of which is “Could more have been done to have reduced the death toll?” Indeed, the film doesn’t touch on any aspect of Tangshan’s earthquake preparedness (or lack of it). Why, for instance, was Tangshan unprepared when at least one nearby county, Qinglong, had actually heeded scientists’ warnings that a strong earthquake was likely to hit the region; and went as far as installing its own measures to safeguard its population: http://www.globalwatch.org/ungp/qinglong.htm

Feng Xiaogang, the director of Aftershock, was asked if he now considers himself a master filmmaker (in the context of Aftershock becoming the most successful film in Chinese cinema history in terms of opening day box office receipts – the 36 million yuan it grossed knocked Avatar off top spot). His reply, published on www.sina.com, provides a revealing insight into the dilemma that affects mainland Chinese directors, particularly those who are responsible for films that focus on important events that have occurred during the lifetime of a large proportion of the film’s audience:

“I’m not [a master filmmaker]. This is not an era that can produce masters. …Because we [directors] face too many danger points. …You can’t get too close to these danger points. You can’t just casually cross the stream. You have to jump from this rock to that rock and carefully try to move forward. …But sometimes there is no rock, and then you have to make a detour, because, if you just jump into the water, you might drown.”

Xuchang! The final stop on a nine day tour that began on June 3rd in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province. From there I flew to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, for a three-night stay. On Monday, I flew to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, before travelling three hours by road to the prefecture-level city of Mianyang. Then, back to Chengdu for yesterday’s flight to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, from where I travelled directly from the airport to the prefecture-level city of Xuchang.

I must admit that when I saw Xuchang on my travel itinerary, I raised an eyebrow. “Where’s that,” I asked. The person I asked wasn’t sure. “It’s in Henan province… or, then again, it might be in Hunan,” was the reply. Their uncertainty made me feel a little better about having no idea which province it was in.

Before I go anywhere “new”, I usually spend quite a while learning as much as I can about the place I’m planning to go to. However, on this occasion, other than working out that Xuchang is “not far from Zhengzhou”, in Henan province, I simply didn’t have time to find out more.

So, I’m embarrassed to admit, I arrived in the city without knowing the first thing about the city. In these situations it pays to go for a walk and to find some local people to talk to. I met Mr Ma, who was selling fruit near to the hotel I was staying at.

“Hi, I’ve just arrived in the city,” I said, “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling me something about the place?” Mr Ma looked at me as if I had just stepped out of a spaceship. I tried a different approach: “What’s Xuchang famous for?” I asked.

“Xuchang,” used to be an ancient capital,” said Mr Ma without any hint of pride.

“Great,” I said. “Where can I see the ancient sites,” I enquired.

“There aren’t any,” said Mr Ma. He shook his head. “No, not a thing.”

[On returning to Beijing I would find out that in 220AD Xuchang was declared the capital of the newly-formed “kingdom” of Wei, one of the Three Kingdoms, which were each ruled by an emperor who claimed to have the mandate of heaven (the right to rule) by dint of his superior lineage, connecting him to the last emperor of the deposed Han dynasty. For some reason, after only a couple of years in Xuchang, the Wei emperor moved his court to Luoyang (also in modern day Henan) – which, unlike Xuchang, does have some excellent ancient sites to look around. Oh yes, I also found out that modern day Xuchang has a population of 4.5 million. And that the city is twinned with Ambo in Ethiopia although, with due respect to the city of Ambo, that wasn’t the top of mind answer when I asked Xuchang people what their city is famous for.]

I thanked Mr Ma for the information and moved into the backstreets of the older part of town to find out more. A forty-something lady was sweeping the floor of her open-air restaurant. I sat down to have a cup of tea, and to ask some questions.

“Famous for?” Ms Chen repeated the question. She said nothing for more than a few moments, while she pondered. Then her eyes it up.

“Well, my sister works in a hair factory, and I know that’s an important industry here.”

“She makes hair?” I asked. As soon as I asked it I realised what a stupid question it was. Ms Chen was kind:

“No, she makes wigs and hair pieces out of people’s hair.”

“So people sell their hair here?” was my next stupid question.

“Here and all over China,” Ms Chen said, doing her best not to laugh at my stupidity.

I would later find out that the price of human hair in China has increased dramatically over the past few years (in 1990, people were paid 10 yuan for each kg, in 2007 the price had risen to 550 yuan per kg). Locally-bought hair has become so expensive, in fact, that Xuchang and other Chinese hair product manufacturers are increasingly sourcing hair from other countries, such as India, where people are prepared to sell their hair for much less.

My appetite whetted, I couldn’t wait to find out just how famous Xucheng-manufactured hair products really are. I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I was amazed. There are more than a hundred Xucheng companies that specialise in hair products that, collectively, employ more than 200,000 people. I was equally amazed to find out that many of those companies have English language websites.

Most of the companies’ names contain either product promises or women’s names. The range of promises includes “harmony” (Xuchang Harmony Hair Products); “elegance” (Xuchang Elegance Hair Products); “dream” (Xuchang Dream Hair Products); and “glitter” (Xuchang Glitter Hair Products). While I’m sure than many people in need of a wig or hair extensions are looking for “elegance” or “harmony”, there must be those whose primary need is functionality and are simply looking for reassurance that the extensions won’t fall out, or their hair piece won’t slip down. Enter Xuchang Dragon Proof Hair Products, which trades as Xuchang Dragon Proof Fashion Limited. Dragon Proof (www.DragonProof.com) describes itself as “One of the largest hair products manufacture[s] in China.” Its impressive factory complex, which can be seen on the video that’s embedded on its website, occupies nearly 100,000 square metres of Xuchang’s Economic and Technological Development Zone. The company boasts solus funding from Hong Kong investors, assets of 360 million yuan, and a payroll of close to 3,000 people.

As far as companies with women’s names are concerned, there’s a bevy of them to pick from: There’s Xuchang Cindy Hair Products (not to be confused with the Xuchang Xindi Hair Product company); Xuchang Diana Hair Products; Xuchang Selina Hair Products; and Henan Rebecca Hair Products, which is based in Xuchang.

Rebecca is by far the most famous of all the Xuchang-based hair product companies. But why “Rebecca” you may be wondering. Well, Zheng Youquan, who founded the company in 1993 was, it seems, a bit of a romantic. He chose the name of the company, he says, after being beguiled by Rebecca, the eponymous heroine of a Daphne du Maurier’s novel. Mr Zheng’s fascination with the name was such that he somehow even managed to get the name incorporated into his address (Rebecca Avenue, Xuchang). The company also has a hotel in Xuchang. The Rebecca Hotel of course (see photo).

Rebecca, which employs 10,300 people, sold 1.6 billion yuan worth of hair products last year (using more than 2,000 tonnes of hair) is the only hair products’ company in China to be publicly listed. It is the world’s biggest wig maker with a 15 per cent share of global market. Its export volume is twice that of its nearest Chinese competitor. Last year, 61 per cent of its export sales were in North America, while sales to Europe only accounted for nine per cent of the volume. The nature of global hair product demand is changing rapidly though. Sales are rising most rapidly in the African market where, this year’s contribution to global revenue is expected to exceed last year’s 26 per cent. Thanks to the World Cup of course…

...I’ll be tuning in tonight to watch the opening match of the competition (South Africa versus Mexico), live from Johannesburg. As well as watching the football, I’ll be keeping an eye out for one of Rebecca’s wigs, 20,000 of which – in the national colours of the 32 competing nations – have already been sold in South Africa.

I got up at 5.30am and drove down to the Wenyu river, which forms the border between the Chaoyang district of “central” Beijing and the Shunyi district of “outer” Beijing. On my regular morning excursions there, I never cross over from the Chaoyang side, as I prefer to record anything of interest as “seen in central Beijing”. It was a glorious morning: The sky was cobalt blue, there wasn’t a breath of wind, and many newly-arrived Oriental Reed Warblers, hidden away in the lush paddyfields by the river, were in fine voice. A beautiful Yellow Bittern, my first sighting of this species this year, flew out of the rice-bed just in front of me and treated me to an wonderful flypast before it dived back down to – no doubt – continue its hunt for breakfast.

I’ve been watching and photographing birds in Beijing for 16 years and it still continues to amaze me how rich “central” Beijing’s birdlife really is. Since the beginning of last year, I have seen more than 100 species at this one site, including two male Red-Crested Pochards, a species that usually gets no further east than central Asia; a Bewick’s Swan on its way south after spending the summer on the Russian shores of the Arctic Ocean; a small flock of Swan Geese probably on their way to Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province; and several Pallas’s Grasshopper Warblers taking a breather on their long journey from south-east Asia to places perhaps more than a thousand miles north-east of here.

Visits to other places in “central” Beijing this year have been equally rewarding: On one early-spring morning, at Yiheyuan (the Summer Palace) – one of Beijing’s biggest tourist attractions – I (and numerous passers by) took photographs of some of the 144 swans of three species that had rested on the lake there (133 Whoopers, 10 Bewick’s, and a single Mute Swan, a very rare visitor this far east). Chaoyang Park, Beijing’s biggest and busiest park, has continued to delight, with a Siberian Rubythroat, several Red-flanked Bluetails, and a flock of Siberian Accentors high on the list of memorable birds.

Birding in Beijing doesn’t get much better, though, than the morning I enjoyed in January this year a few miles south of the Marco Polo bridge, where I managed to get some quite reasonable photographs of a flock of Mongolian Larks and half-a-dozen Pallas’s Sandgrouse, which are usually denizens of the central Asian deserts (Many thanks to Xiaoming, one of the growing band of very keen and skilled local birders, for inviting me to join him and his friends on what turned out to be a successful search for these two usually very difficult to see species).

But on the minus side: The loss of habitat continues at a frightening pace. My local patch is hanging on against the odds while, just south of there, land-usage “transfers” have resulted in bulldozers moving within earshot of the paddyfields. Beijing’s migrant and breeding birds face other perils too: A few weeks ago, also on the Chaoyang side of the Wenyu River, my wife and I confiscated two boys’ catapults after we saw them trying to shoot birds out of the sky. This morning, in just about the same place, I saw someone doing something that turned my positive impression of the morning on its head. I watched through binoculars as a man waded into the paddyfields near to where the Yellow Bittern had landed and proceeded to erect a long “mist” net, using bamboo poles to support it. Over many years in China I’ve witnessed many instances of these contraptions causing death and injury. Usually I see the aftermath – the less marketable birds (the ones that don’t sing, aren’t brightly coloured, or can’t be eaten) are often left to hang there because the bird-catcher doesn’t want to waste time untangling them from the fine mesh that ensnares them. This time, I was there before any damage could be done and I was determined to tell the man what I thought of him and his type. I approached him from the east, with the low morning sun at my back. Eventually he saw me.

"Hand me the net... now!!" I demanded.

Although not as scary as a gun, the spade he was holding did look a bit menacing. My demand had clearly fallen on deaf ears because the bird-catcher lifted up the spade and started walking towards me. Time for either a sharp exit or to stand firm (or at least to pretend to be standing firm):

"If you don't give me the net immediately, I'm going to call the police," I shouted out in my gruffest, no-nonsense voice. This was a bluff of course. I could imagine the (short) phone call to the emergency 911 number: "Hello, I'm at the Wenyu River, and I've caught someone trying to catch birds in a mist net... and I need you to be here... hello... er... hello..."

"Now!!" I repeated. The spade-wielding man continued walking towards me, and then to my great surprise, not to mention even greater relief, he put up his hands. "Please don't call the police," he pleaded. With that he ran back to the poles in the middle of the paddyfield, tore down the net, and ran to hand it to me.

I was on a roll, so I thought I’d chance my arm at some Lock, stock and two smoking barrels lines: "I have your photograph," I told him darkly. "If I ever see you in the area again, then it's all over. Tell your mates that the same goes for them. I come here every day. And no one catches birds in my manor." With more apologies, and something about he'll become a reformed character from now on, he jumped on his cycle and rode off.

I looked at the net: standard design... long human hair... painstakingly knotted together... days of work. 100 yards down the track, I found another mist net. But no one was attending it. Were they lurking in the reeds (having watched the showdown I've just described being played out, or was it one prepared earlier by the Catcher I had caught)? I didn't wait around to find out. I tore down the net – this one was made of synthetic brown thread – and lined it up next to the one made of human hair. Two scalps for the price of one no less.

A few days ago I arrived in Shanghai and took a taxi from Hongqiao airport to Fuxing Park in the centre of the city. It was a horrible journey of more than an hour that cost a hefty 110 yuan. Previously, the most I’d paid for the same trip was about 80 yuan. “Sorry,” said the driver, “It’s the Expo”.

This is the first time that the Expo has bee granted to China. Since its inception in 1851 – when the inaugural event, “The Great Exhibition (of the Works of Industry of All Nations)”, was held in London – the Expo has been to Asia only on four occasions (Japan, three times; and once in South Korea). So, there is a palpable sense here in China that this is a hugely important event that further signifies (less than two years after the Beijing Olympics) that China has taken its rightful place not only on the world stage, but at the very centre of it.

Expo 2010 has been the ongoing “big story” here since, funnily enough, the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The millions of local column inches devoted to the Expo have prompted tens of millions of Chinese to set their sights on coming to Shanghai to see it for themselves. Add to those tens of millions a significant number of foreign visitors and you arrive at the official visitor projection for the six-month extravaganza: a cool 70 million people (an average of about 380 thousand each day).

While it would be tempting for people struggling to get around Shanghai this summer to blame their travel difficulties on the Expo, the truth of the matter is that – other than the area adjacent to the venue – Expo visitors (the majority of whom will be taking public transport) are not likely to add much more misery to the “normally” (ie Expo-less) woeful traffic situation in Shanghai. Traffic congestion because of “sheer weight of traffic” is, increasingly, a fact of life in Shanghai, as it is in every Chinese city. It’s simply part of the price to pay for the staggering economic development that has made car ownership an attainable aspiration for more than 100 million people (China overtook the US last year to become the world’s biggest auto market, with 10.3 million passenger cars sold – 53 per cent more than the previous year.)

So, if it’s not the Expo-visitors’ fault, then just who is to blame for the horrendous traffic around Shanghai during the past few days? On my (tortuous) way back to the airport I stopped off at the gates of the Xijiao guesthouse to find out.

I’ve been a regular visitor to Xijiao – which has the best woodland and lake in Shanghai – for more than a dozen years. It really is a pleasure to walk around the miles of little paths and to quietly sit in one of the small pavilions – only a mile or so from the hustle and bustle of Hongxu Lu, but a million miles away from the sometimes quite-maddening crowd (the grounds are private and the high walls and tight security ensure that the only people I usually see there are gardeners).

On a visit to Shanghai two weeks ago, though, I discovered that the gardeners were not the only people in uniforms. Armed guards from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were positioned on strategic bridges and pathways. They prevented me from getting to the western half of the oasis, but I was still able to enjoy a pleasant stroll around the eastern side following a very nice pizza at the Guesthouse’s coffee-shop (you can’t buy tickets to get into Xijiao, but a visit to the restaurant provides de facto access to the gardens and lake – a one day “pizza pass” as it were).

But, earlier today, I realised that security was on a completely different level. No amount of pleading was going to get me past the PLA captain on the front gate and his “No entry, refurbishment in progress” sign. This was not a surprise, of course, because today is the official opening ceremony of the Expo and the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, and dozens of other heads of state and dignitaries are in town for the event. From the Chinese government’s perspective, if you’re important, then you just simply have to be on the Xijiao guest list. Mao Zedong started the fashion by staying there 49 years ago (in 1961). Since then more than a 100 heads of states have been guests there – including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in October 1986; President George “W” Bush, in October 2001; and President Obama in November last year.

These days, though, even the most prestigious of establishments have to have an eye for commercial opportunities that can offset maintenance costs (which, in the case of Xijiao include the staffing costs of an army of gardeners). As well as offering one of the best pizzas in Shanghai to anyone who wanders in off the street, the venue has also hosted “branded events” since at least as far back as 2004, when Shanghai Tang hired the south lawn for a Champagne reception, followed by the “runway” launch of its autumn “nomad” fashion collection. Liu Xiang, who had just returned triumphantly to China following his 100 metres hurdles’ gold medal success at the Athens’ Olympics was one of the well-heeled guests that night.

Talking of hurdles, with so many state leaders here for the Expo launch, and therefore so many cavalcades whizzing around town on cleared roads (which are closed for several minutes before the arrival of the motorcade), it’s not surprising that getting around town has been painfully slow. I don’t want to rain on tonight’s parade, but I think it’s only fair to say that “Better City, Better Life”, the Shanghai Expo’s official theme, should have come with an “Except when you can’t get a pizza at Xijiao” caveat.

I watched the small flock of Teal circle over the “reservoir”, looking for a place to rest on their arduous northward journey. After circling four times, and failing to find a deep enough area of water to land on, they flew off. I put my binoculars down and surveyed the damage that has been done to one of the prime birdwatching sites at one of the world’s most important migration stop-off points.

Dismayed, I stared incredulously at the dozen or more diggers and trucks that were crawling around on what was, until recently, the south end of a reservoir that had been teeming with aquatic life and the birds that depend on its richness. I’m not ashamed to admit that my bottom lip began to quiver as I called a friend to find out what was happening – after all, this area had been, I had understood, designated a “protected area” (one of only two protected areas on the entire Qinhuangdao coastline as far as I know).

I found out that the official line is that “they are cleaning the river”. Incredible as this seemed, I was at least given a little hope that my fears that this precious place is being “developed” are groundless. But even if it is restored to its former glory (or miraculously improved), the decision to drain the reservoir in the spring – when numerous fresh-water-dependent birds pass through the area – is breathtakingly heartless.

I have been coming to Beidaihe every spring for the past 16 years and have witnessed a gradual decline in the prime habitat that the migrants depend on. “Gradual”, that is, until this visit, when on a single day I saw destruction on a bigger scale and faster pace than I have ever seen here before: the Yang estuary has been dammed; twenty per cent of the bird-magnet little wood near there has been cut away; many of the fish-rich ponds near the Yang river have been filled in and another housing estate is being built; housing estates are also being built on the sides of the Dai river; a housing estate now occupies the entire area of the once-fabulous (for birds) “Radar Marsh”; and 4x4s were driving around the sandflats, the only other “protected area” (at least that’s what the sign says).

Last year, I attended the International Bird Festival in Beidaihe, where dozens of birdwatchers, environmentalists, and a few government officials gathered to talk about the importance of protecting this critically-important migration area. Words are easy, but words need to be judged by their effectiveness. And judging by what I have seen today, those pleas for help, aimed at the only people who can provide the islands of protection against the relentless tide of infrastructure development in this country – the government officials – fell on deaf ears. As they always do. Over the course of 16 years, the only designated “protected areas” I am aware of have been at the reservoir and sandflats (see above).

This really is a crying shame, not just for the birds, but also for the reputation of Qinhuangdao (the city that is responsible for the administration of Beidaihe). Among birdwatchers and environmentalists around the world, the Qinhuangdao region is a world-famous location – more than 400 species of birds have been seen within the city’s borders. Every year for the past 16 years, scores of foreigners made the long trip here to witness one of the greatest migration spectacles on the planet (they wrote about it, took photos of it, and told others about it, who in turn came to see it for themselves). The city’s residents know about this and many are quite rightly proud of their city’s international “status”.

The city’s government has, not surprisingly, been keen to leverage this for its own PR. If you read the gushing local tourist books and look at the local government’s official website (they have an English version of it if you would like to take a look), you get the impression that the people responsible for the area are acutely aware of the importance of protecting the natural environment, and that this is a “green haven”. Indeed, this idea of “green, harmonious development” is something that has been embraced by all levels of government in China. This policy is not just simply the right thing to do ethically it also (as I have touched on) pays dividends in terms of how a city is perceived – by its citizens and by the tourists that visit it (domestic and overseas).

Only a handful of China’s 700 or so cities are as fortunate when it comes to the richness of the natural environment and the diversity of the wildlife that falls within their jurisdiction. In this respect, nature has dealt Qinhuangdao the most marvellous hand. And this is why the people responsible for running the city have to act now before it’s too late, because there’s one thing far, far worse than not being famous for something, and that is being infamous for wantonly flushing that precious something down the toilet.

Being known as the city that used to be famous for birds and birdwatching would not be an advertising slogan to be proud of.

Everyone (at least those with an Irish connection – no matter how tenuous) knows that today, the 17th March, is Saint Patrick’s day. I, for one, will be having a pint of Dublin’s own Liffey Water tonight to toast the Great Saint. I wonder, though, how many people know what is significant about the 15th March? The anniversary of the murder of Julius Caesar (44BC)… yes indeed. The anniversary of the opening of Selfridges in London (1909)… correct, but get a life. Maine admitted as the 23rd state of the USA… impressive. Commemoration of the Holy Martyrs Agapius and his seven companions… score 50 bonus points (but only if you didn’t have to google or baidu it, as I did).

But how many people – hand on heart – know that the 15th March is also World Consumer Right’s Day? It was the former president of the USA, John F. Kennedy, whose speech, delivered on the 15th Match 1962, inspired the movement. He said: “Consumers by definition include us all. They are the largest economic group, affecting and affected by almost every public and private economic decision. Yet they are the only important group… whose views are often not heard.”

But if you think that, thanks to JFK, 15th March is the day that the eyes of the world’s media organisations focus on the issues affecting the consumer and, in so doing, expose the manufacturers and marketers whose standards fall short of what the consumer is entitled to, then think again because World Consumer Right’s Day was largely ignored. Except, that is, here in China, where it was embraced with open arms not to mention a gleeful rubbing of the hands.

On hearing this, if you are thinking that “Consumer Day” was perhaps used as an opportunity to remind all manufacturers that consumer interests must always come first (with the public’s health and safety at the top of the list of a company’s responsibility), then think again. Instead of using the day to urge companies to re-double their efforts to guard against the kind of systemic failings that were, for instance, exhibited by those found guilty of manufacturing and selling contaminated milk products, the big guns of the Chinese media took aim in a different direction.

The People’s Daily, CCTV, the China Daily, and numerous web portals all had a go at one section of the vast China marketplace: foreign brands. The People’s Daily headline, “Tests reveal foreign brands’ quality flaws,” was intended, with a single brushstroke, to tar as many foreign brands as possible.

Their scoop is that “International brand-name products, once hailed in China for their high standards, were under the spotlight Monday, World Consumer Rights Day”.
The articles goes on to say that, “Results from a two-month long sample quality inspection by the Zhejiang Administration of Industry and Commerce (ZJAIC) showed imported clothes produced by 30 internationally recognized brands from 11 countries and regions, including Versace of Italy and Hermes of France, were below regulation standards. A total of 48 out of 85 batches of clothes were faulty, with just 43.5 percent meeting the standard.”

The report highlights a litany of shortcomings, including “excessive formaldehyde” allegedly found in Verri jeans. I would have thought that any level of formaldehyde would be a worry, but “excessive formaldehyde”, according to the local media, can cause skin irritation and even cancer. So much for me thinking that the biggest danger faced by jeans-wearers is an increased susceptibility to groin strains.

Interesting that the two-month long inspection process should be concluded just in time for the results to be announced on World Consumer Right’s Day. Interesting that the ZJAIC has a track record of “exposing” the failings of foreign brands (“Through random inspection, we intend to warn consumers about blindly trusting foreign brands, which have many problems," said a spokesman of theirs). Interesting that Zhejiang is one of China’s most important manufacturing bases for garments destined for export. Interesting, also, that Chinese-manufactured clothing has been under the spotlight of late because of receiving countries’ quality concerns.

Chinese academics were wheeled out from all points of the compass to voice their shock, horror, and indignation at the arrogance of "foreign brands". For instance, Yu Minggang, professor of Brand Marketing at Shanghai Jiaotong University seethed: “It is high time foreign brands stepped out of their shrines of worship” (presumably so they could be stoned by an angry mob of outraged consumers).

Marco Brugognone, partner at Verri, was having none of it. He told The Wall Street Journal that he was "very surprised" to hear of the findings, suggesting that the pair of jeans that the Zhejiang authorities had claimed contained “excess formaldehyde” might well have been a fake pair. If that turns out to be the case, then Zhejiang – which is one of the centres for the counterfeiting of foreign luxury clothing – would have a generous amount of egg on its face.

Prior to the Zhejiang incident, the China Daily, in a separate (?) attack, published a glossy “name and shame” colour page, with the headline: “World Consumer Rights Day special: Focus on int'l brands in China.” Sprite was one of several brands in the dock. The headline next to the bottle of Sprite reads: “Second victim to claim Sprite poisoning in Beijing”. The story opens with: “A middle-school student has become the second person in Beijing to get mercury poisoning after drinking a can of Sprite in less than three months.” This is far more serious than the charge that Verri jeans contain “excessive levels” of formaldehyde, or at least it would be if it were true. I clicked through to the story of the first alleged mercury poisoning incident, which had been widely reported as the fault of the manufacturer, only to find that the man had, according to the Beijing News, admitted to injecting the mercury in to the bottle himself – rendering the China Daily’s story misleading at best.

That’s why it’s hard to take these “There’s a wolf!” reports at face value. For whatever reason or reasons, the media here seem to have declared open season on foreign-owned brands, whose shortcomings (imagined and real) are regularly and unfairly positioned as an affront to China and Chinese people. Whatever the agenda, the stoking up of the “us” versus “them” age-old fears and prejudices does no one any favours, least of all the Chinese consumer whose rights they purport to be protecting.

If you are managing a foreign-owned brand in China, this is a time for extra vigilance and to redouble your quality-checking, review your suppliers' operations, and re-examine your distribution chain. In other words, beware the Ides of March.

Being stabbed in the back is one thing, but formaldehyde poisoning is far nastier.

The plan for today was to hike over the Gaoligongshan mountain range to Tengchong. The 26 mile route follows the mountain trail known as the Southern Silk Road, and ranges from 1500 metres to 3,600 above sea level (masl) and down again to 1,800 masl. Unfortunately (?) the weather yesterday up top was poor. Looking up from about 2,400 masl I had seen that thick cloud was enveloping the mountain tops and fresh snow had fallen. Not ideal conditions for a walk which, even on a good day, would be a test for my endurance. Walking the same distance as a marathon is one-thing, but doing so while climbing up two vertical kilometres, to about the same altitude of Lhasa, across the backbone of one of the wildest mountain ranges in China – while carrying a backpack – is quite another.

And so, at the last minute, I changed the plan and hastily arranged for a truck to take me to Tengchong and for Mr Zhou to pick me up there in his “large, black VW”, on the Gaoligongshan side of town. From there he would drive four hours to Nabang, in far western Yunnan. Arranging anything in this part of the world can be a lottery at the best of times, but I had struck lucky. The Gaoligongshan driver had nothing planned for the day; and the Tengchong driver, Mr Zhou, was only too pleased to get a long, money-making fare.

I first met Mr Zhou last year, in March, when I had taken his battered taxi from Tengchong airport, also to Nabang. Several days later, for the return leg, he’d swapped his well-used local-brand taxi for a large, shiny, black, and very comfortable VW sedan. The car attracted more than a few admiring glances in the border town, where rickshaw-taxis are the only taxis in town.

“New Car?” I asked. He told me that he and his wife ran the taxi business and that she usually had the VW, but because I was now an “important customer,” she had suggested they swap for the day. Mrs Zhou, it seemed, called the shots when it came to their business affairs. Mr Zhou’s mobile phone was even answered by his wife, who arranged his day’s fares for him.

And so I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when, yesterday, I had dialled the entry on my Nokia: “Mr Zhou VW, Tengchong,” and she had answered “his” mobile phone. The promise of a pleasant drive in the air-conditioned, spacious VW, was the factor than had compelled me to call the number. I had spoken slowly and clearly to make sure that there would be no misunderstanding: “So, the large, black VW I rode in last year would definitely be there a 9am,” I confirmed with Mrs Zhou. I was taking no chances because, in this part of China, where bone-shaking journeys and breakdowns are the norm, the VW brand-name stands out like a beacon. With group sales in China totalling 1.4 million units in 2009 – a year-on-year increase of 37 per cent – I am not alone in pinning my transport-hopes on the tried and trusted VW badge.

The bone-rattling pick-up truck, which I had hired for the first leg of my journey, left at 5am for the four hour drive (the driving distance to Tengchong is 6 times further than the walking distance). We travelled in darkness for most of the trip. Progress had been a little slower than I had anticipated, so at about 8am I called Mrs Zhou to say that I may be 5 or 10 minutes late at the rendezvous point. “No problem,” she reassured me.

At 9.05am – five minutes’ late – I arrived at the swap-over point on the outskirts of Tengchong. I said goodbye to my Gaoligongshan driver and hello to a smiling Mr Zhou. I looked around for the promised VW-badged car. I then noticed that Mr Zhou had his moped with him. “Where’s the car?” I asked.

“Mashang lai!” he said with a serious look.

Nothing annoys me more than being told that something is coming on a horse. That’s the literal meaning of mashang. It’s meant to be reassuring and to conjour up an image of someone galloping towards you at breakneck speed, who would arrive in moments. I enquired about the horse’s progress. It transpired that Mr Zhou’s wife had the car (to squeeze in an extra customer before picking me up). After 20 minutes, my patience was wearing a bit thin. I called Mrs Zhou, who told me that she was still galloping towards me and that she would be with me in, guess what, no more than another 20 minutes. I’m afraid this was the last straw. I had got up at 4.30am to be here for 9am.

I told Mrs Zhou what I thought about her and her husband’s shoddy service, and told her to take her time as I would not be waiting for their horse, even though it was a thoroughbred.

Although this made me feel better, this probably wasn’t a sensible thing to do, as I had to make my own arrangements for what was a less than straightforward journey. But I didn’t care, the principle was worth suffering for. I marched across to the other side of road and waited for a taxi. After five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single one. Then I saw an empty taxi driven by a 60 something year old woman. Elder Sister Wang looked surprised to see me, but stopped nevertheless. “Where are you going?” she asked. I told her.

“That’s crazy,” she laughed, “No ones goes that far west!” In fact, it’s impossible to go any further west as my destination abuts the border with Burma, one of the most dysfunctional countries on the planet.

After two minutes of discussion, I had persuaded her to take me half way; and after realising she was a remarkably good driver – in fact one of the best I’ve seen in China – I renegotiated for her to take me all the way (and to pick me up in five days' time). Happy with the deal, Elder Sister Wang dropped down to third gear, breezed past a convoy of bread vans that were struggling to negotiate the pot holes on the dirt track, and raced towards the border in her battered local-brand taxi, which had suddenly risen several places in my hierarchy of brands.

Isn’t it strange how one’s observations and experiences of a brand’s owner or user affects brand perception.

I went to watch Avatar today. In the interests of consumer research of course, not because it has been touted as the best film-experience ever (although, I have to say, the hype is well-deserved). I was expecting a long queue for a ticket and fully prepared to have to come back another day.

But much to my surprise, only half the tickets for the next showing had been sold. Then again, it was the Friday matinee, and they were charging 120 yuan (more than ten English "quid') a ticket.

I donned my 3-D glasses and settled down alongside 100 or so others to watch the film of the decade (okay, so the decade is only a few weeks old, but it's certainly going to be a hard act to follow).

"What did you think of the film?" I asked a young couple on their way out of the theatre.

"Amazing, it's the best film I've ever seen," said the mid twenty-something man. His partner agreed, "Fantastic!"

"What about the story?" I asked. Both of them agreed that it was also a great "love story".

"Will you watch the Confucius film," I enquired. "I don't think so," said the man looking across to his partner for confirmation, which was quickly forthcoming in the form of a shake of the head.

These comments support the conclusions I had drawn after reading various postings on Internet bulletin boards:

One, the notion that Avatar is being pulled from screens across China (tomorrow will be its last showing in 2D form apparently) because the censors worry that it will remind people of "forced evictions" (something of a political hot potato in recent years here) is way off the mark, although it does make for an interesting storyline.

Two, the decision to give the locally-produced film about Confucius a free run in the lead up to and during Chinese New Year (a bumper time for cinema), whatever the motivation in pulling Avatar to make room for it, is likely to back-fire.

How many of those who were thinking of seeing the film in 2D (cheaper and more accessible in many parts of China than 3D) will, I wonder, blame Confucius for being denied the pleasure. Not good for that film's prospects, nor for the Sage's public relations for that matter.

Lots of the high-profile foreign media have already picked up this story and most are convinced that the decision has been politically-motivated. For what it's worth, I am far from convinced that this is the case.

No matter who is right, the stage is literally set for Confucius to come riding into town. The problem is that the film is, according to many who have seen it, a bit of a yawn.

A bad film is a bad film, whichever way you look at it. Or, more likely the case, you don't look at it.

"See this film because there's nothing else to watch" is not and never will be a compelling reason to make a trip to the cinema.

Which brings me on to my conspiracy theory... This revolves not around politics, but the far less newsworthy subject of box-office takings. Let's do the sums: Avatar is the biggest grossing film in China to be sure: according to Fox, the film has already grossed US$76 million here. But, it is the relatively small number (about 900) 3D cinemas that have accounted for the lion's share of that (US$49 million). Not surprising really, the word is already out that you just have to see Avatar in 3D. And the decision-makers aren't about to kill the goose that lays golden eggs this big.

Many people who don't or can't see it in 3D, wouldn't have gone to the cinema to see the 2D version anyhow. Why would they, when they can buy a knock-off DVD for less than the price of a small bowl of popcorn. The problem for those responsible for the Chinese cinema industry is, this is also far less than the price of a cinema ticket for Confucius.

Farm 3 and farm 5 to be precise. So far, farms 4, 2 and 1 are trouble-free.

If all of this sounds a little bizarre, I know how you are feeling. This morning, I received a note on my Flickr account from someone in China who also has "farm trouble".

He or she had added a comment to the front page of my photostream. Instead of congratulating me on getting a shot of the very elusive male Temminck's Tragopan, which I had taken on my recent visit to Emei Shan (previous article), the note simply said:

“OK, so you've got the same problems as me: farm3 seems to be blocked since the start of this week.”

I'm a keen Flickrerite, and thought I was fairly conversant with the site’s shorthand, but I had no idea what a farm was. A quick trawl of the Internet and Flickr's own discussion groups gave me the answer:

A farm is a Flickr server. All of the many millions of photos that are stored by Flickr are loaded on to one (of five) of then. Farms 3 and 5 are the ones that are currently used. Oddly, except for the photos on my front page, all of my photos on these two farms have been replaced with blank boxes.

Older photos that were loaded on to farms 4, 2, and 1 can still be seen. Farm 4 was used as recently as three months ago. I checked the URLs of photos going back to 2007 and found that both farms 1 and 2 were in commission that year.

This poses more than a few problems for me. Not only can I (and other Flickr members similarly afflicted) not see the majority of recent photos on my Flickr account; the “photostream” and “wild water” sections of this website have also been badly affected – because I link them via html code to the photos that reside on the Flickr farms:

There are white spaces where farm 3 or farm 5 photos should be, while farm 4 photos can be seen (right click on the photo or empty space and you can see which farm it’s on).

Wonderful! So, my long-suffering visitors from China (both of them) can’t see most of my photos and none of my videos (which are linked by html to You Tube, which has been blocked here since March of last year). By the way, in case you weren’t aware, joy of joys, Facebook and Twitter are also blocked (find out more about The Great Firewall of China by scrolling down to my 8th August 2009 article, “Watch with Mother”).

More digging unearthed an unexpected and somewhat chilling twist: The problem is, it seems, confined to China Unicom subscribers. Subscribers of China Telecom, its main competitor, are reportedly unaffected. A novel way to build your brand and develop close relationships with your customers to be sure.

Conspiracy theories are already circulating. One user suggested that the Flickr mail he received just after the problem started, offering him a VIP membership of tuhigh.com, a photo sharing site that is a Flickr look-alike (except you can see all the photos), was proof that this was an attack prompted by commercial interests.

I tried to find out who owns Tuhigh, thinking that this may be significant, but my searches drew a blank. More likely, there is no conspiracy and Tuhigh is simply spamming China Flickr members opportunistically.

Everyone has his or her theory about why this is happening, but not one person (of the dozens who have commented on the Flickr discussion page) believes that Unicom is suffering technical problems. As for my assessment of the situation:

What I do know is that this is a different kind of blocking (Flickr was blocked last year for a week, following certain events in the far north-west). But that was an old-fashioned site-name URL blocking (you couldn't see the site at all). This time round you can at least (and it's a small comfort) see all of the comments and text on the website, and you can see many of the older photos.

I also know that the problem started three days ago – the same day that Google announced their revised China strategy

Coincidence? I doubt it.

Interestingly, there has been no comment from Yahoo (the owners of Flickr) in respect of the problems its Flickr users are experiencing here. Following their declaration of support for the principle that Google is fighting for, and the public denouncement by their partners Alibaba (which runs Yahoo in China) that publishing this statement was a "reckless" act, they are probably thinking that they have said enough – for the time being at least.

After all, there are still three farms that have, as yet, not being visited by the wolves.

Not to mention the five farms that are on the higher ground that is owned by different landlord.

It had been a difficult climb, but well worth it.

I had set off on the early morning of the 30th. It took me an entire day to get to Hongchun Monastery, where I spent a ridiculously cold, damp night.

The following day, the climb grew steeper and the weather colder. It was snowing heavily, and visibility was down to fewer than 50 yards. The thick ice had made the path treacherous.

Thankfully, a man in a small hut at about 2,000 metres above sea level was selling metal cleats (as well as Dove chocolate).

He tied the contraptions to my boots (my hands were far too cold to do this), and miraculously the metal spikes were able to grip the ice and I was able to trudge onwards and upwards, arriving at a small hostel near to the Greeting Gate just as the light was fading. My clothes were soaked with sweat, and there was nowhere to dry them. The food in the small restaurant next to where I was staying was appalling and the beer was far too cold to drink.

I got in to the damp bed and looked at my watch. It was 11pm: the last hour, of the last day of the last year of the decade. I fell asleep shivering, but nevertheless despite the hardship, I was happy to have got this far in two days – 50km from where I had started and 2,000 metres higher. Only another 10km and 500 vertical metres to go.

I had to wake up the receptionist to check out. I was keen to continue my walk up the mountain before sunrise. Not that I had seen any sun during the previous three days.

Then something incredible happened.

I had been walking for an hour and could sense that the sky was brightening in the east. I looked in that direction and then I saw them. The first sun rays of the year (decade!) were filtering through the low cloud.

Then, unbelievably, I saw the sun rise above the sea of low clouds. I watched in awe as the orb became brighter and freed itself completely from the clouds that seemed to be doing their best to hold it back. My heart was soaring. What an incredible experience. I looked around for someone to share my joy with, but I was on my own (no one in their right mind would have got up that early and climbed in near-darkness).

Then I realised that it was my Chinese birthday! (Every one in China ages a year on January 1st.) This New Year's Day was even more auspicious as my age has reached a round number. Another reason to celebrate.

Enthused, my pace quickened and within the hour I had reached the summit. The jinding [golden summit] was indeed bathed in an ethereal golden light. The views from here had to be seen to be believed.

Then they started arriving.

First a few, then a few dozen, then hundreds, then a continuous stream of people climbing the steps to join me at the top of the mountain. The day trippers had arrived!

They hollowed, they whooped; they threw snow balls; they punched the air in delight.

Their exuberance was contagious. I found myself grinning madly as one, then two, then three people asked if they could have their photo taken with me.

"Where are you from?" I asked one of my new friends, who was in his mid-twenties.

"From Beijing!" Mr Zhou gushed. "I just had to come to Emei for New Year's Day. It's such a holy place!"

I could sense that Mr Zhou thought that a visit here, to one of if not the holiest mountains in China, was karma-boosting.

"Are you a Buddhist," I asked him half-jokingly.

"Not really," he told me, "But I don't not believe!".

I smiled at his pragmatism, otherwise known as agnosticism I suppose.

I talked some more with Mr Zhou, who simply shook his head when I told him that I had walked all the way up the mountain (taking the longer, south-eastern route).

"No one climbs all the way up," he laughed. "Didn't you know you could take a bus most of the way!?"

I played along.

"You're telling me I've taken three days to do something I could have done in two hours," I said with as earnest a face as I could muster.

Mr Zhou looked uncomfortable, thinking that he had upset me.

"I'm only joking," I laughed. Of course I knew about the bus, but I thought the walk would be more enjoyable!

"What do you do for a living," I enquired.

'I'm in IT; I'm responsible for my company's computer system".

"And what are you hoping for in 2010," I asked.

Mr Zhou thought for a moment, before telling me:

"I just want to keep moving upwards."

I knew exactly what he meant.

“What flavour would you like?” enquired Ms Zhang.

“What flavours do you have,” I asked. I stood open-mouthed as she reeled off an impressive list of exotic flavours – so exotic that I had no idea what half of them were. Of the ones I did have some idea about, the Hami melon flavour was the most enticing.

“Are the Hami melons from Xinjiang,” I asked.

“I guess so,” she said, “Where else would they be from?”

Her brusque riposte was exactly what I deserved (serves me right for trying to show off that I actually knew that Hami is a town in Xinjiang).

She handed me the Hami ice cream cornet.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I wanted to say it was good, but with a mouthful of ice cream I had to make do with nodding enthusiastically.

I must confess that the reason I had gone in to the “Aike Gelato Italiano” (literally: Love Customers Italian Ice Cream) shop was to find out about the post-it notes on the wall. As I had been walking by, the sight of hundreds of brightly coloured post-its had stopped me in my tracks. “Who had put them there, and what did they say?” I wondered.

The three yuan I had just paid for the ice cream had also bought me the opportunity to find out the answers to these questions.

Ms Zhang told me that most of her customers were from the high school opposite, and that she encourages them to decorate her walls with post-it note graffiti (she supplies the post-its, in several different colours).

"What do they write about,” I asked. She looked at me as if to say what a silly question, but answered it nevertheless. The messages that her 15, 16, 17 and 18 year-old customers had pinned up mostly fall in to two categories. Love notes, it seemed, were the most popular leave-behinds (for the girls). While "fighting talk" was the boys' preferred subject. “I guess teenagers are the same the world over,” I joked.

“Why did you decide to open an ice cream shop,” I asked.

“I live nearby and was looking to open a shop in this area after the one I had before (a clothes boutique) was demolished.”

I knew what she meant without asking. Chengdu, along with all the other Chinese cities, is busy knocking down old neighbourhoods and replacing them with shiny new apartment and office blocks, shopping centres, and arcades. Ms Zhang’s clothes shop was one of many thousands of houses and businesses that had been sledge-hammered to the ground (cheaper than bulldozers) in the name of modernisation and economic development. But, rather than feeling sorry for herself and thinking about how good things used to be, she (and countless others) had bounced back and had gone on to better things.

Indeed, Ms Zhang’s business sense is highly developed. She told me that the school opposite is one of the top high schools in Chengdu. As well as high-achieving students it also counts Li Peng, the Chinese premier from 1987 to 1999, and adopted son of Zhou Enlai, Mao's right-hand man, as one of its alumni.

The “quality” of the school is an important consideration for any would-be ice cream shop owner in its proximity, because the kids who attend the “best” high schools tend to have richer parents than kids who attend less-acclaimed schools. That means more pocket money and therefore more money for them to spend on ice cream. Hence the move up-market to relatively premium-priced Italian ice-cream.

But Ms Zhang thinks they deserve their treats. She told me:

“I feel sorry for them. They are under so much pressure. The gao kao [university entrance exam] is so difficult, and this school strives to be the best, so the kids have to work even harder. They start school at 8am and don’t finish until 9pm. The time they spend here [in her shop] is precious to them.”

I could sense that her customers were important to Ms Zhang for reasons other than their their purchasing power.

She saw that I was about to sit on one of the high stools next to the post-it wall. “Be careful...,” she said, “...that one’s broken.”

Ms Zhang went on to tell me the story of how one of the kids had accidentally broken it last week. The student had been really worried because she would not have been able to pay the replacement cost (Four months ice cream money I calculated).

“…But I told her not to worry...,” she smiled, “...After all, we were all young once.”

They are pampered, well-fed, royally entertained, and ferried around in luxury vehicles. Brightly coloured swarms of them can be seen at midday running harem scarem on Sanya’s golden beaches. Contrary to popular belief, they are not afraid of water… Indeed, many can be seen splashing about in the waves that lap gently on to the shores of Yalong Bay – their preferred habitat. At night, it’s not unusual to see some of them swaying to the beat of an 80s Brit-pop anthem, while knocking back the free-flow wines, beers, and spirits. They are known – in the hospitality trade at least – as “MICE”.

The industry’s somewhat discourteous acronym (I, too, have been one of their millions, and I can tell you that the above description is a bit too close for comfort, for me at least) stands for: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences/Conventions and Exhibitions/Events.

In the first half of 2009, 3.4 million tourists visited Sanya, 3.22 million of whom were mainland Chinese (up 14.5 per cent year-on-year; while the economic downturn in most parts of the world led to a 40 per cent decline in non-mainland tourists). And a large number of those tourists were MICE – who contribute more profit to the island's tourism industry than the average visitor. (Sorry for not presenting the numbers, but MICE are notoriously difficult to count – at least I managed to find out that there are about 6,000 groups a year of them in Sanya, according to Du Liyin, the director of the Sanya Tourism Development Bureau.)

The nature of those groups is extremely varied. Let’s look at the Sheraton Sanya Resort, for example. It has hosted the final of the Miss World Contest on three occasions. It has also played host to the 108 visiting monks from the Buddah societies of the Taiwan Strait, Hong Kong and Macau.

The Sheraton and the other leading hotels of course love to attract high profile events, but it’s the MICE from their numerous corporate clients that really bring home the cheese. But the nature of this source of business is changing rapidly. These days in Sanya, you are just as likely to stumble across an event or activity organised by a Chinese company you’ve never heard of than one paid for by a world famous brand.

This evening I was walking past the Crowne Plaza in Yalong Bay, Sanya, when bright lights and the sound of a male’s rich baritone voice caught my attention. A group of locals were watching the performance, pressed up against the gold rope that marked the boundary of the corporate entertainment area.

Naturally curious (well, I was born in the Chinese year of the mouse – aka “rat”), I just had to find out what was going on. Something in the order of 150 well-heeled guests were helping themselves to the seafood buffet, while the baritone crooned out a mournful song. They had gone slightly over the top with the special effects, and the dry ice looked more like smoke that was enveloping the performer. Undeterred, he crooned on. Behind him I could see the billboard announcing the evening’s sponsor. It was non other than “Yang Quan Coal Industry (Group) Co., Ltd.”

Of course I had never heard of them. I asked one of the bouncers standing by the gold rope who they are. “From Shanxi,” he told be begrudgingly. “And what about the guests”, I asked. “Bosses and their customers,” was his curt reply. Well fancy that... There was I thinking that the 100 top coal-winning miners had been flown here on an all-expenses-paid jolly.

The plight of miners in Shanxi and all over China is certainly no laughing matter.

In 2008, according to the State Administration of Work Safety, 3,215 miners lost their lives. In Shanxi in 2009, 77 men died in one accident at Tunlan coal mine in Gujiao city, which is close to the provincial capital of Taiyuan. While there is no suggestion that Yangquan company – one of the country’s top five coal-mining companies, and China’s largest producer of anthracite coal – is any way culpable in respect of any of the fatalities, it did strike me as somewhat distasteful that in a year that has been beset by large-scale mining disasters, and in a year when the Shanxi economy was the only provincial economy to shrink (minus 4.4 per cent y-o-y for the first half of 2009), the company had decided to hold a huge end-of-year bash in Sanya.

I couldn’t stop myself thinking that the money paid out for the large shoal of king prawns being devoured by their employees and guests would have been better spent on improving the industry's safety record, or providing better support to the loved ones of those brave men who so tragically lost their lives.

I glanced at the singer again. The smoky backdrop suddenly appeared strangely macabre.

It’s fun playing the place association game. Ask a number of people at random – at least six to give the exercise a veneer of statistical robustness – to say the first word that pops into their head when a city name is mentioned, and one is able to learn a lot about how different people in different regions view the world and the way it works. Mention “Milan” to a group of twenty-something ladies in Shanghai and you most probably would get “fashion” as the response.

The mention of “Milan” to older Beijingers is more likely to provoke the response, “football”. While fans of the football team Chelsea may well chorus in reverential tones “The Special One” (the self-styled name of Jose Mourhino, the last Chelsea manager to steward them to Premier League success). In case you were wondering, The Special One now manages Internazionale, aka Inter Milan.

What, then, do people think about when the city Lanzhou is mentioned? I asked several people from various parts of China to give me their top-of-mind word to describe the provincial capital of Gansu and each one them said the same word, and they said it with an exclamation mark at the end and with a glint in their eye.

“Noodles!”

Not being much of a fan of noodles (other than when I can’t get anything else to eat), I had just about forgotten the findings of my “research” when an acquaintance told me that I simply must go to the most famous chain of noodles restaurants in Lanzhou – because not eating noodles in Lanzhou is, it seems, the equivalent of not eating duck in Beijing, fish and chips in London, or not drinking Guinness in Dublin. In short, it’s not just a cultural faux pas, it’s also an error of judgement that would haunt one forever (presumably, after one had somehow seen the light).

The Guinness analogy caught my attention, not because I had abstained on my visits there but because it’s frightening to think that there are, I guess, some people who have been there and not drunk the black stuff.

The problem was that Jin Ding Niurou Mian, the most famous Lanzhou beef noodles restaurant in the world didn’t open at night. In Lanzhou, it seems, noodles are only eaten at breakfast and at lunch. I’m more likely to skip lunch than not, so the prospect of a midday bowl of noodles was a little foreboding to say the least. But, despite my excuses, I was somehow dragged along to the restaurant.

One bowl of noodles would have been more than enough I thought, but this restaurant had other ideas. Their standard set Lanzhou beef noodles lunch comes with not one bowl, not two bowls, not even thee bowls, but FOUR bowls of noodles. Each of which contains noodles of a different length, texture, and thickness. The pecking order, I was told, is to eat the thinnest noodles first and progress to the thickest. There was also a supporting cast of several side dishes crammed on to the large tray. And all for the price of 30 yuan (about US$4). Now this may sound wonderful value, but it is far higher than the going rate for beef noodles in the thousands of noodles shops in Lanzhou, where the local delicacy can be had for a couple of yuan. But this was, after all, the Savoy of noodle-eating, so I wasn’t about to complain.

The price of noodles is, it seems, always a hot topic in Lanzhou and is capable of stirring much passion and, if the incident a few years ago is anything to go by, even threatening social harmony.

The dark period in Lanzhou’s noodle history I am referring to was back in 2006 when thousands of locals simultaneously choked on their noodles when they realised that – literally over night – the price of a standard bowl had risen by almost 15 per cent. Such was the newsworthiness of this event that the People’s Daily – the mouthpiece of central government – even covered the story. But it was the investigative journalists from the Western Economic Daily that exposed the truth (obvious to every one in Lanzhou) that the price rise was coordinated. Outrage of outrages… there was a noodles cartel at work no less.

The noodles barons were influential restaurant owners who were intimidating other owners. The threat was, put your price up to our price or risk being the victim of an “accident”. The public outcry and the weight of evidence were such that the city government simply had to take action against the perpetrators.

What was all the fuss about I wondered?

I finished the first bowl.

It was, quite simply, the best bowl of noodles or, come to think about it, the best bowl of anything I have ever tasted. Succulent beef, aromatic broth, perfect noodle-texture.

The next three bowls were also scoffed in double-quick time.

Still not satisfied, I looked around for more.

I was conscious that the kitchen staff (the noodle-pullers themselves) were watching when I volunteered to eat the bowl of noodles that one of my dining companions couldn’t manage. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

It happened to be a bowl of noodle number four – the really special ones.

There’s something a little bit special about Shantou, a city of about five million people that abuts the South China Sea in Guangdong province. But it’s hard to put one’s finger on what it is.

The first impression of the city, gleaned on the ride from the airport to the downtown area, is that it is has just been taken out of the box. Local governments try hard to make the ride from the airport as impressive as possible, but few manage to paper over all the cracks. But in Shantou, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t spot any building that looked like it wasn’t freshly painted. But then again it was dark.

The air of pristine order lasted all the way to the start of the downtown area when, at the first traffic lights, an ancient truck with bars at the back didn’t bother to stop at the red light. The soulful stares of three men caught my eye, and in a split-second I jumped to the conclusion that this was a prison truck. A second look showed just how wrong first impressions can be. The truck was, in fact, a private truck and the men were, most probably, migrant workers on their way to or from their place of work.

I would have loved to have stopped them for a few minutes to find out their story, but chasing after the truck wasn’t a sensible thing to do. I didn’t have to wait long, however, before I was stopped by a migrant worker, who wanted to know more about me.

Mr Zhang is from Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, and came to Shantou five years ago to make his fortune. “Where are you from,” he asked. I told him. “What’s your favourite food,” was his second question. I told him that too. “Sorry, I don’t know of any Indian restaurants here, but I do know a good Italian.” Mr Zhang pulled out a card from his pocket, and handed it to me. “It’s five minutes away, I can take you there if you like,” he offered. Mr Zhang gestured to his tricycle rickshaw that was parked some 20 yards away. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” I said. “In that case, why don’t I take you to a really good tailor I know. They make excellent European suits.” I wondered what a European suit looks like. A complete dog’s dinner of a 20-odd country compromise I mused. “No thanks,” I smiled.

Mr Zhang saw that I was looking down at the pavement at two telephone numbers, painted on to a paving slab that had caught my eye. “Oh, if you want to buy some fapiaos, then I have a number. They’ll give you a much better deal.” I told him that I was not a member of the British parliament so had no need for fapiaos – official receipts that are often traded on the black market (and bought by the unscrupulous who use them to claim imaginary expenses or to offset company tax liability).

Undeterred, Mr Zhang tried another approach. “You must be tired after your trip from Guangzhou, I reckon you could do with a massage.” With a magician’s dexterity, Mr Zhang pulled yet another card from thin air. This one showed a drawing of a scantily clad woman, the Chinese characters anmo [massage] and a mobile phone number. “No thanks,” I said, “I don’t feel tired at all”. But he didn’t hear me as he was answering his mobile phone. “Wei!” he shouted. “Dangren you” [“Of course I’ve got some!”]. I didn’t like to ask “what”, but whatever they were, Mr Zhang would deliver them to the caller within an hour. Mr Zhang put away the N series Nokia – one of the more expensive ones – and turned his attention back to me. I gave the card back to him and repeated, “No thanks”.

“In that case,” he said, “why not take a ride with me, “I’ll show you Shantou.”

There’s no doubt that Mr Zhang could have taught me a lot about Shantou but, alas, I had some work to do.

Maybe in a previous life Mr Zhang had been a top salesman, or an estate agent, or a psychologist, because I had an uncanny feeling that I was being profiled. Every question he asked was related to something he could sell me either directly or indirectly.

Shantou is able to provide Mr Zhang with something that Zhengzhou can’t: An environment that is conducive to his entrepreneurship.

Shantou has been attracting entrepreneurs for generations. It was one of the Nineteenth century “treaty ports”, as well as one of the original special economic zones (SEZs). Sons of Shantou include Huang Guangyu, one of the richest people in China, the founder and former head of the Chinese electrical retailing giant Gome (who is currently the subject of a criminal investigation related to alleged share-price manipulation); and Ma Huateng, another fabulously rich individual, who founded Tencent, an Internet services company that, among many offerings, runs QQ – the most popular instant messaging service on the planet (which has something in the order of a half-billion registered users).

I asked Mr Zheng if he could put his finger on what it is that makes Shantou such a special place. He thought for a moment, before concluding that he had no idea. Although he was able to offer one clue: “People drink a lot of tea here”.

Perhaps, then, it’s something that’s in the water.

It was one of those magical days. The 5 inches of snow that fell last night has transformed the Chaoyang district of Beijing. The grey dust that coated the buildings, trees, roads, everything, has been air-brushed by the thickest blanket of powdery snow I've ever seen in Beijing. So much for global warming.

Any thoughts of spending the day tapping the keyboard of a computer were quickly hijacked by an irresistible urge to go to the biggest and best open space in central Beijing, Chaoyang Park. Usually, it takes no more than 20 minutes to drive there; this morning it took just over one hour. But it was worth the effort.

I wandered around chatting to anyone who wanted to chat and taking photos of people at play.

Three chefs had just finished building a snowman.

"Where are your customers today?" I joked. "No one will come today," the head cook said with a chuckle, as he added the finishing touches to a snowman that was almost as tall as him.

I could make out that he had buttons made of sliced carrots; carrot-top ears, a bamboo hat, and an eggshell nose. But there was one facial feature that had me guessing...

"What are its eyes made of?" I asked.

"Aubergines of course!" shouted out the junior chef who was standing behind me.

The head chef smoothed out the chin and then stood back to admire his creation. "There, you can now take a photo of it if you want".

The head chef was right. There would be no customers today. The park, which on any normal day has many thousands of visitors, held three chefs, a mum and her cute three year-old daughter, two students, a few hardy older ladies, and a dozen or so park workers, some of whom were trying without much success to knock the snow off the tops of conifer trees with long brooms, and two who were driving around in what I can only describe as a Noddy car.

As I turned the corner, I spotted two more people. A photographer and her young model, perhaps in her late teens, dressed in a full-length white woolly coat, opened to reveal a white frilly blouse; and a knee-lenth white skirt that almost touched the tops of her extra-long leather boots - white of course.

On hearing the crunch of the snow behind her, the photographer - a woman in her mid-thirties - stopped taking photographs of the girl and trained her Canon on me instead. I smiled and let her fire off perhaps a dozen shots.

"It's my turn now," I said.

"The price for photographing me is that you let me take a few shots of her," I said jokingly.

"No problem," please go ahead.

"Thanks", I said, "Are you from Beijing?"

"No, we are both from Henan province, we have come to Beijing to sell our work."

"Good luck," I said, "She's very beautiful and I'm sure you are a good photographer, so I'm sure you won't have any trouble doing that."

I then turned my attention to the young lady. "What do you want me to do," she asked.

"Just be yourself," I replied.

Ms Wen then proceeded to perform every cliche pose in the book: the pout, the finger on the chin; the cupping of the face; the sexy "come here" look, the resting the head on the hand; the pursed lips; the kiss...

I was doing my best to take photos as she segued from one pose to another; but it was hard work. But after the tongue licking the side of the lips pose, I just had to say something.

"Please, please, just relax and be natural," I pleaded.

"Okay, how's this", she said, as she put her hands on her hips and simpered in the manner of a Disney princess at the first sight of her Prince Charming.

The best strategy, I found, was to ask her a question, and take a photograph as she answered."

"Do you like Beijing," I asked.

Click, click, click.

I’ve never had the pleasure of sitting down with Geoff Hurst and hearing how he scored a hat-trick (3 goals) in the 1966 world cup final, which propelled England to their first (and so far, only) world cup victory. But, brand fans may be interested to read that, 15 years ago in New York, I did have the pleasure of meeting Martin Puris, the founder and former chairman of the advertising agency Ammirati Puris Lintas, and listening to him recount the story behind his creation of one of the most powerful advertising slogans of all time, “The ultimate driving machine”. The copywriter's equivalent of Mr Hurst’s remarkable feat.

This line, written by Mr Puris in the mid-seventies, encapsulated the essence of BMW and, as well as capturing the imagination of a generation of driving enthusiasts, also acted as a rallying cry for the brand’s designers, engineers, and marketers. The rest, as they say, is history. BMW, a beleaguered brand up until that point, went from strength to strength to strength.

One of the pillars of the brand was its meticulous attention to detail; another was its provenance – Germany, the fatherland of engineering excellence.

So surely BMW, the bastion of Germanness, couldn’t possibly be made in China?

On the contrary, the stellar sales performance of China-made BMWs has embarrassed the theorists who believed that “made in China” would somehow damage the integrity of the brand and lessen demand. In the first nine months of this year, BMW’s sales in China have increased by about 32 per cent year-on-year, to around 60 thousand units – most of which are built in the company’s plant in Shenyang, Liaoning province, where the 3 and 5 series models are produced.

So, if that’s okay, then at what point is a brand’s identity compromised by a cultural or geographic shift in its identity?

What about the notion of painting a Chinese flag on to a BMW? Surely, that’s going too far?

Others may disagree, but I don’t think so for a moment.

BMW has many decades of German heritage – to the point that, for many, one is synonymous with the other. Painting a BMW in the colours of the China flag, complete with its five yellow stars, and showing it off in a glass case on the piazza of one of Beijing’s busiest shopping areas, will not for one moment make anyone, at least anyone of sound mind who’s ever driven a car, think that BMW is a Chinese brand.

Likewise, painting the Great Wall (and, yes, a China flag flying over it) on the front of a Harley Davidson – as I photographed a few weeks ago (click here to see a photo) – is not going to lessen that brand’s association with the United States, Route 66 and, for some, the Hell’s Angels. A strong brand needn’t have to worry about the occasional sortie into unfamiliar territory.

The positives gained from improved PR and enthusiastic word-of-mouth (WOM), not to mention the increasingly important eWOM, far outweigh any possible negatives.

But, I do have two issues with the BMW in the picture.

The first is to do with undermining one of the brand pillars I mention above, “meticulous attention to detail”. When looking at the photographs on this page, please don’t think for one moment that my camera’s colour balance and sharpness are out, the presentation of the car was, as it appears, nothing short of appalling. In fact it’s one of the worst paint-jobs I’ve ever seen. If it had won third prize in a primary school’s paint-a-car contest, I would be questioning the integrity of the judges. Take a closer look, among other things, at the outside of the fuel-filler cap. Yes, they’ve missed more than a bit. Contrast this with the perfect finish of the artwork that was used on the Harley Davidson.

The second issue I have is that the car they used to represent BMW, the 1 series (which reportedly will be made in China next year), doesn’t sit comfortably in the stable of a brand that positions itself as “The ultimate driving machine” (okay, they had to drop that line a while back because the other car companies, not surprisingly, didn’t like it, but the spirit remains).

There simply has to be a limit to how far a brand can stretch.

Another painful stretch, I reckon, is the Mercedes A series – and there are many other examples, in the automotive category and beyond, of companies cashing in some of their brands’ equity to boost sales numbers and profit figures.

Change the centre of gravity of a brand, and risk upsetting loyal customers. Continue to do that without replacing them, and it’s a matter of time before the famous line of the 1966 world cup final commentary repeats itself: “…They think it’s all over…”.

I’m in Hong Kong for a few days – all work and no play alas. But, at least I had a little time today to catch up on some reading and to post an “I’m still alive” message on to Facebook (which is still blocked on the mainland).

Most of my reading material was found during a freestyle surfing session on Google News – another site that is regularly blocked or neutered by China’s Great Firewall. Although much faster than on the mainland, it still took Google’s omniscient search engine a few nanoseconds longer than expected to yield results for my “China retail shopping” search – a sure sign that it’s a hot topic. But at least the news was worth waiting for.

The China Ministry of Commerce has just announced that retail sales have increased by 18 percent compared with the same holiday period last year, China Briefing reports today. The so-called “Golden Week” National Day holiday was a day longer this year (The Mid-Autumn Festival, the date of which changes with the lunar calendar, was added to what would otherwise have been a seven day break), so the increase is probably not as significant as first appears. Nevertheless, there are encouraging signs that things are on the up:

The report states that the value of retail sales during Golden Week was the equivalent of 570 billion yuan (US$83 billion). The biggest increase vis a vis the same period last year was in Guizhou province, one of the poorest areas of China. There, retail sales grew by 37.6 per cent no less. The second-largest increase was in Chongqing (32.6 per cent), while Henan made it into third place with 31 per cent.

The most compelling evidence that business is indeed booming was found in Guangzhou, where auto sales “almost doubled”, according to Business Week (7th October), which cited a Ministry of Commerce nationwide survey of 1,000 retailers that compared business levels at the start of the recent holiday with those from the same period last year.

At a national level, as well as automotive, the household electronics category did well, as did sales of digital cameras, mobile phones, and jewellery.

Tourism is another big “gainer”. 200 million people were classified as domestic tourists by the China Tourism Academy during the Golden Week, a 13 per cent year-on-year increase. Beijing, thanks to it being the spiritual epicentre of China’s 60th birthday party, managed to attract the most domestic visitors – 15 million of them and a staggering 59 per cent year-on-year increase, according to a source cited in the China Journal.

The 200 million domestic tourists spent an estimated 100 billion yuan – an increase of 25 per cent. More people may indeed be spending quite a bit more per capita on domestic trips. But the expenditure is still relatively modest – the equivalent of about US75$ per person.

These numbers don’t, though, take into account trips to and spending in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Taiwan is still at its nascent stage as a destination for mainland tourists (only 11,000 people went there during the eight-day period), but the people who did make the trip spent heavily – the equivalent of over US$2,100 each. 28 times more than the average mainland tourist spent on the mainland.

During 1-7 October, 420,000 mainlanders visited Macau – although it’s not clear how many of those were also counted in the figures for here, Hong Kong, where (from 1-8 October) there were 590,992 visitors from the mainland, 16 per cent more than last year.

Most mainlanders were not here to visit Disneyland; preferring instead to spend, spend, spend in the shops. Their expenditure on luxury goods is particularly significant.

In a recently published paper, The Boston Consulting Group reveals that close to 70 per cent of the buyers of luxury goods it interviewed in Beijing and Shanghai said that they preferred to shop for these products outside of mainland China.

Not surprisingly, Hong Kong, thanks to its close proximity, cultural affinity, lower sales taxes, generally more reliable product-provenance, and depreciating currency (which continues to be tied to the US dollar), is the top destination for cash-laded mainlanders.

As Hong Kong continues to extend the Individual Visit Scheme (the list of approved cities is generally linked to the wealth of the city), the number of visitors will rise significantly. This is great news for Hong Kong retailers of high-end, easily portable goods; but less positive for their mainland counterparts, whose predicament will ironically worsen as wealth increases. The “second wave” of tourists to countries and shops in other parts of Asia, Europe and the Americas will make matters even worse.

This phenomenon is set to influence the retail strategies of brands that are premium priced as well as brands that are firmly in the luxury category. To pluck one example out of the air, Nike shoes are much cheaper at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport (a key hub), for instance, than anywhere (legally) in mainland China.

The custodians of the world’s most famous luxury brands have long-since realised that money spent on flagship stores on the mainland should be thought of as a long term global investment in the brand. In China at least, it would be wrong to evaluate the stores in revenue terms only. The cash may indeed be registered on the till of the Guccil store in Hong Kong (below), but the relationship with the brand may well have been cemented in the Gucci store in Beijing or, perhaps one day, even in Guizhou province.

Premium brands should also be thinking about the future in the same way.

As for mainland China’s retail sales figures… they will increasingly misrepresent mainland consumer’s actual spending power and influence.

The reality will be much rosier than the numbers suggest, and this gap will continue to widen roughly in line with the increase in the number of mainland tourists travelling to Hong Kong and beyond. What’s more, these new luxury-shoppers will increasingly be coming from China’s third and fourth tier cities – the future powerhouses of global luxury shopping.

“You won’t be able to get inside the second ring road,” the taxi driver had told me last night when I asked him about the traffic restrictions in Beijing today. Not easily put off, I decided that the best way to get close to the National Day celebrations would be to cycle in to the city. My objective was to get close enough to Tiananmen – the geographic and spiritual heart of the occasion – to be able to take a photo of the national flag. This, as it turned out, was easier said than done.

The day had begun inauspiciously with a thick blanket of smog that hung around until about 9am. At 8am, I had set off on a wet and very muddy road – the reported “seeding” of the clouds with silver iodine, to induce rain and thereby clear the atmosphere of pollution, had had at least some effect. Then, as I neared the city, the veil of low cloud quickly evaporated and, incredibly, for the first time in many days, the sun began to shine brightly – no doubt much to the relief of the people who had been given the task of delivering a “blue sky” national day (see previous article).

At 8.45am I was within the second ring road (using a small pedestrian tunnel just in case). Then, after 10 minutes, I hit the first serious road block. Each intersection was guarded by the police; and each hutong (small lane) was blocked by two or more civilian volunteers, sporting red arm bands, and sitting on small stools. It took me twenty minutes or so of cycling up and down the road before I found a small alleyway that was poorly guarded. The volunteers, all five of them, were busy telling an elderly man that he couldn’t deliver the boxes that were on the back of his tricycle. I raced through the opening that I had spotted and within seconds had taken a sharp right down a narrow lane. After a series of twists and turns, the alleyway joined a wider road and, heading west, I was sure I was within the first security ring.

The second cordon was harder to negotiate, but after thirty minutes or so of searching for the right moment, I at last found a breach in the defences, and was through – and within a stone’s throw of Dongchang’an Jie – the avenue that runs east of Tiananmen and from where Hu Jintao was to begin his inspection of the troops. But the security here was at a different level, so I decided to quit while I was ahead and parked my bike outside a restaurant that was close to the junction with Nanchizi Dajie, at the south-eastern tip of The Forbidden City. Here was parked the coaches that had carried the VIPs with tickets for the East Grandstand.

A small restaurant, close to the junction, was doing a roaring trade. Groups of soldiers, rotating every 30 minutes, were dropping in for their meal break. I parked myself at a table at the back and watched them watching the ceremony on the restaurant's small TV. Jiang Zemin, the former president, who retains a good degree of influence, was as popular with the soldiers as he was with CCTV, whose cameramen seemed to be torn between following him and following his successor. The giant portrait of Deng Xiaoping being carried aloft was also well received; as was the lofted portrait of The Great Helmsman himself, Mao Zedong.

Mao had proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in front of a crowd that was reported to be in the region of 300,000 people (at the time, urban Beijing’s population was only 1.65 million). 60 years on and, ironically, Beijingers – other than the lucky few who made it on to the guest list – can only watch from their armchairs.

Then it was time for the air show. This, at last, was something I could watch live. And what a show it was. Formation after formation of the air force’s most advanced aircraft blazed a red, yellow, and blue (not sure why blue) trail across Beijing’s azure sky. The crowd around me were ecstatic; pointing whatever lens they had skywards. Never have so many Nokias been trained on one single event I mused.

From here, I moved on to my next challenge, crossing a deserted Jianguomen, and thanks to the directions of a man on a child’s scooter, managed to cycle close enough to Tiananmen to complete my photo-challenge (see above). “What do you think about today,” I asked him. “Wonderful,” he said, “Beijing has never been so quiet”.

I then spent a couple of hours trying to penetrate the inner cordon; without success, but it was fun trying. I cycled up to at least a dozen checkpoints in the alleyways south of the Square. Here, though, they were manned by soldiers not citizen volunteers.

Well satisfied, I beat a tactical retreat and headed to an Irish pub to watch the evening’s show and fireworks display on CCTV, and to sort out 60 photos (among the several hundred that I have taken) to post to Flickr to mark my participation, albeit on the fringes, of a momentous day in China’s history. (The collection of photos can be viewed here.)

But what does the event mean to the man or woman in the street? Clearly, there is a groundswell of national pride and a feeling that China has come a very long way in a relatively short period of time. 60 years ago, Mao said that the Chinese nation had stood up. Today there is a palpable sense that it is walking briskly with its head held high.

I pushed my bike to the garage door and pressed the button that set the opening-mechanism whirring. The door had lifted no more than a few feet when I decided that I should take a taxi instead. Cycling in Beijing can be hazardous at the best of times, but with pollution this bad, it would have been reckless to have cycled the 12km to my appointment, near to the East third ring road.

I persuaded the taxi driver that he should close all of his windows; despite his protestation that “fresh air” is good for you. Such is the hardiness of the Beijing taxi driver. Or maybe he had tuned in to the Beijing Public Net for Environmental Protection, which publishes daily forecasts, and tracks the cleanliness or otherwise of the capital’s air (their website can be viewed here).

Incredibly, today, which in my humble unscientific view has the worst air quality for several weeks, scores “95” and is officially a “blue sky day” – a day when the average API (air pollution index) is at or below 100, and therefore “good”. An air quality score of 50 is regarded as “excellent”, while 300 or more is described as “severely polluted”.

“Blue sky days” were under the spotlight of the world’s media last year in the run up to the Beijing Olympics. Mindful of the PR significance of a pollution-free Olympics, the authorities went to unusual lengths to ensure that the air quality during the games wouldn’t provide ammunition to a large section the world’s media who would have loved to have rained on China’s parade.

It’s hard to say whether it was the draconian traffic restrictions (leading to a significant reduction in car journeys), the closure of many polluting factories around Beijing, or the time out that was called on the many thousands of construction projects that resulted in a glorious last two weeks of August 2008. Or maybe it was simply “a change in the weather” that made the difference. One thing is for sure, there was an awful lot of pressure on the people responsible for delivering the decreed “blue sky”.

The final score for full-year 2008 was 274 blue sky days. A record number and an incredible tally considering that, in 1998 – when targets were first introduced – only 100 unpolluted days were recorded in Beijing. Even more incredibly, it’s looking like 2009 – the auspicious year when the People’s Republic will celebrate its 60th anniversary – is set to break last year’s record number. The day that really matters though is the 1st October, National Day, when the live broadcast from Tiananmen and Jianguomen will be beamed live to the vast majority of Chinese homes. On that day, a score of 95 and therefore “good” air quality won’t be nearly good enough.

It had been a long, difficult walk under an unforgiving sun.

The track that I had cycled down only a few months before had been turned into an ant’s version of the Himalayas. Inexplicably, there was only one man working on the earth-moving project. Shovel in hand, he begrudgingly divulged that “It’s going to be a highway”. But he didn’t know where it would come from and to where it would go. I’m a firm believer that, in China at least, there are times when the inexplicable should be left unexplained and so, without further enquiry, I wished the man good luck. Then, after more than two miles of climbing, stumbling, slipping and sliding, the obstruction came to an end. As I was descending from the mound to the level single-track road that stretched for miles, I was thinking that the morning could only improve. It didn’t.

The next test was the dust. The benign-looking road disappeared each time a car came along – shrouded in a veil of particulate matter that you could taste and sometimes chew. I knew from my winter excursions that there would be another two miles of this torture. Missing lunch is one thing; but suffering long-term respiratory damage is quite another. Even more worryingly, I had promised my wife a leisurely stroll by the river.

Then a miracle happened.

The noise of the car approaching from behind made me take a deep breath – thinking that it would create a cloud of dust in its wake. But that didn’t happen. I could hear it screeching to a halt and, turning round, I saw a sight that was medication for my sore eyes.

A Beijing taxi!

The surreal was cranked up a notch when he began flashing his lights, smiling, and waving excitedly. These days, it’s rare to see a welcoming taxi-driver in Beijing, and here we were in the middle of nowhere being rescued by the most welcoming driver I’d seen for years.

We entered the air-conditioned oasis, and the surprises just kept coming.

In English, the taxi-driver welcomed us with a cheery, “Hello; Welcome to Beijing; God bless you!”. I had heard the “Welcome to Beijing” greeting many times – it must have been lesson number one in the English-language course given to taxi drivers last year to prepare them for the Olympic-tourist influx. But the “God bless you” sounded odd to say the least. I then noticed he had a rosary with blue beads and a small, silver crucifix dangling from his rear-view mirror.

He drove fast, swerving around the “speed-calming” humps that were at intervals of about 100 yards, while recounting his story (in heavily-guttural Beijing Mandarin):

“I’m a Christian. [big swerve.] I go to church every Sunday… to the big church near to Dongfeng Qiao; where I listen to a European priest [even bigger swerve]. I don’t understand anything he says… because he speaks in English, but I really like the feeling. It gives me a kind of calmness I’ve never had before." [screech of the brakes, followed by a massive swerve, which caused the car to be enveloped in an ethereal cloud of dust.]

Now I must admit to have been a little puzzled by Mr Mao's account of “thousands” of locals freely worshipping at a church in Beijing each Sunday. I had thought that Chinese nationals were not allowed to hear foreign priests deliver sermons. The River of Grace Church, for instance, notifies would-be attendees of the restriction that, “Currently due to local government regulations we are only permitted to admit foreign passport holders to our church services.”

But it seems that Mr Mao’s church – Chaoyang Church (photos here) – is a beacon of progressiveness when it comes to the freedom to worship in China. In 2006, it was the venue of the first ever sermon to be given in mainland China by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (which can be read here); and the church has a string of other firsts to its name.

Chaoyang Church has its own website (which can be viewed here – in Chinese); and its own hotmail address – cychurch@hotmail.com. There’s even a bilingual advertisement on its site, which lays out the requirement for the volunteer team it is seeking to recruit:

“There are often over four thousand people who attend Sunday services in Chaoyang Church. So we need people to be responsible for receiving and serving this large number. For this reason, Chaoyang Church has organized The Volunteer Team. Their assignment is to be in charge of greeting and receiving new people who attend Sunday services as well as certain security issues and watchfulness of other urgent matters. All of them have pure faith, and have for long period of time trusted in God. They love God, their country and other people. They are willing to devote themselves to Jesus Christ and to show the Glory of the Lord.”

It is clear from the words and also from reading between the lines that Chaoyang Church is Beijing’s showcase church and that the administrators of the church are working hard to ensure that it stays that way.

When the dust cleared I saw that we had at last reached the main road. Mr Mao continued his sermon: He told us that he couldn’t rely on anyone to care for him and his family [he is married and has a 16 year-old daughter who goes to high school in Shunyi], and that’s why he had turned to God.

He is a recent convert. Six months ago, an old teacher, with whom he has kept in touch, returned from The US and showed him the light. “That’s a gift from her,” he said, pointing at the rosary that was bouncing violently as he took a right turn at speed with one hand on the wheel.

Mr Mao slammed into third gear while continuing his story:

“Before I was a Christian, I used to be in a bad mood a lot; and this affected my driving…

…I used to be an aggressive driver”.

Within minutes we were at our destination, and in plenty of time for the promised pub lunch. I shook Mr Mao's hand and thanked him for delivering us from the back of beyond. He happily agreed to pose for some shots, before bidding us farewell with his trademark cheery wave, and the standard Beijing farewell,"Man zou" ["Go slowly"].

Ms Zhou had of course heard the news that the Apple iPhone would, at long last, be launched in mainland China. But she didn’t appear to be overly excited at the prospect.

“I already have one of those,” she told me, “The eight GB version”.

She and a million or more other purchasers of iPhones in mainland China bought their phone in the full knowledge that the people selling it were not able to provide a manufacturer’s warranty or any kind of official receipt.

If it had broken down the next day, Ms Zhou would have had to have relied on the word of the man she had bought it from – one of the many unofficial iPhone sellers in Zhongguancun, Beijing’s biggest electronics marketplace – that he would replace it. The seller, let’s call him Mr Ping, had actually promised her a three-month warranty; and, as well as appearing trustworthy, he had offered the most competitive price (of the ten people selling iPhones within a few yards of each other), and had also thrown in a couple of “free” applications.

So, satisfied she had got the best deal possible, Ms Zhou had handed over her hard-earned 4,500 yuan, and hoped for the best.

Why trust Mr Ping? Well, the iPhone is much more than a phone of course. For a high percentage of the million or more owners of a shuihuo (smuggled) iPhone in China, it’s an important fashion statement. Thanks to the power of the Apple brand, they are willing to take the gamble of trusting the Mr Pings of this world.

Apple, whose global business model for iPhone relies on revenue-sharing schemes with approved operators, has taken the trouble of installing locking software that is designed to stop the phones being sold on the free-market (theoretically, the device only works with SIM cards from operators who sign a revenue-sharing agreement). However, this is China and consumer demand tends to be satisfied one way or another. So, the entrepreneurs in the supply chain have worked out a way of ensuring that all of the smuggled phones here can accept whatever SIM card the buyer may already have.

The reality is that the vast majority of iPhone users (perhaps as many as 90 per cent of them) are using a SIM card from China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile phone operator.

It’s not surprising, then, that China Mobile didn’t welcome Apple’s revenue-sharing proposition with open arms. Reportedly, they walked away from the deal because Apple wanted significantly more of the revenue than the Chinese operator was willing to concede.

Let’s do the sums: China Mobile has been receiving… let’s see… yes… 100 per cent of the revenue from a million or more iPhone users…. so…

Okay, I’ve conveniently sidestepped the point that a significant increase in sales of the official iPhone is likely to push up the average spend per (premier league) user; but nevertheless I think it’s fair to say that Apple’s negotiating position has been undermined to say the least.

From Apple’s perspective, the silver lining in this particular cloud was painted by the Chinese government, who decided that China Mobile would be given the Herculean task of turning TD-SCDMA (“TD”) – China’s home-grown 3G platform – into a success story; and that the much-smaller China Unicom would be given the tried and tested global 3G technology to play with – the very same platform that the iPhone has been designed to run on (it would take a significant and expensive hardware redesign for iPhone to work on TD, the home-grown China platform).

The awarding of TD to Goliath and the global platform to David is a very innovative way of levelling the competitive playing field to be sure. It also ensures that the politically important “TD” is given the best possible chance to succeed. (Talking of levelling the playing field and innovative solutions, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that – a few years ago – the government decided to job-swap the CEOs of the two companies in an effort to make Unicom more competitive.)

There’s no doubt that TD’s success, when it happens, will be held out to be another shining example of national achievement in the field of science.

With so much national pride riding on the platform (and also mindful of the recently announced 42 per cent fall in half-year profits) it’s not surprising that Unicom has been keen to conclude the deal with Apple.

Well, you can stop holding your breath, because according to numerous reports a “three year” deal has finally been struck. Beyond that, it’s all a bit hazy – as you would expect from Apple, which rarely talks about its product or business plans and from where little, if anything, leaks.

The Apple omerta – its Mafia-like code of silence – is such that details are likely to stay hazy even after the official China launch, whenever that may be.

The only thing I do know for sure is that, as well as thinking about how many iPhones they will sell in China in Q4 of this year or in full-year 2010, they should be sparing more than a thought for Ms Zhou and the numerous other highly-influential first-wave purchasers whose relationship with the Apple brand has been strained:

Ms Zhou took a deep breath before summing up her frustrations: She has not been able to use MSN, because she couldn’t easily download the application (this has to be bought from Apple’s application store in the US she told me); she has not been able to use QQ, China’s most popular instant messaging platform, because there isn’t an application available; she has grown tired of having to use her computer to transfer music from her iTunes library; she can’t transfer her contacts’ details from her old Nokia; and she can’t even use the ringtones she wants to. In summary: the phone has worked fine; but the glow of being seen to be a fashion leader was soon blanketed by a mist of frustration.

Now, I am sure there are a few techies who will read this while shaking their heads and shouting out the names of the various software solutions that would solve Ms Zhou’s problems. But the point is that the vast majority of people who are using the iPhone in China really have no interest in spending hours on researching and implementing “ways around” the various Apple-installed roadblocks that presently exist. For the vast majority, therefore, it’s all a “too much trouble”, so they either resign themselves to the inconvenience or do what Ms Zhou did – she put the iPhone in the draw and went out to buy a Nokia.

She still uses the iPhone occasionally though. “It’s got a great camera,” she says, “I sometimes use it to take photos.”

Another disillusioned iPhone user, Ms Yang, puts it like this: “Everything is free in China, except if you use an iPhone; then you even have to pay for ring tones.”

Hanli Zheng greeted me with a warm handshake and a beaming smile. “Good to meet you,” he said, “…come inside and have a bottle of water”.

I had heard great things about Mr Zheng: wonderfully talent artist; distinguished professor of art; gifted teacher; and great with kids.

Zhou Zhou, who is five years old, is a big fan of his. “I love going there [to Mr Zheng’s summer art school], it’s great fun and the teacher is really cool.” Before her five-lesson crash course in art at Mr Zheng’s, all of Zhou Zhou's paintings contained stick characters with round heads and big smiley faces. After a dozen or so hours of tuition from Mr Zheng and his wife, Ms Wei, she’s gone from matchstick men to the attached Van Goghesque masterpiece.

The burning question I had to ask was: Why does someone whose work now commands five figure reserve prices in European auction houses teach art to small groups of five to eleven year olds in his summer school in Beidaihe, a small town in Hebei province?

Mr Zheng’s face lit up. “Why?!” he beamed. “It’s because I just love to teach children. They are so open to doing new things”.

And how does teaching small children compare with teaching young adults?

“I can be absolutely straight with the young ones… I can tell them what I think in a direct way, without needing to dress up the words.”

Mr Zheng’s love of children is apparent in his sensitive depiction of them in some of his paintings; many of which feature auto-biographical scenes from his childhood in a remote, small mountain village in Dongbei’s [Manchuria’s] Jilin province, very near to the border with North Korea.

It was there that he developed his love of art. Somehow his talent was spotted and he was able to progress through the system all the way to study art at university in Changchun. Then the army came calling.

He was signed up by the army’s entertainment division, which toured the region’s bases, performing song and dance (with revolutionary verve and propagandist scripts no doubt). Mr Zheng smiles at the memory of this. “The army and I didn’t really get on… we had a different way of thinking,” he says with a glint in his eye while gesturing to the long black pony tail that has been his trade mark since he was (honourably) discharged.

On leaving the army, Mr Zheng took up a post as a teacher at Yanshan University (where he met his wife), in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. After several years there he was awarded a professorship. Although he loves teaching, he most enjoys the time in his studio painting or sculpting.

I asked him about the future and what he dreams of doing. More than anything he would like to exhibit his work in the great art cities of Europe. But before he does that, he dreams of fulfilling a boyhood ambition by travelling there to study the great artists that have inspired him. He lists Michelangelo, Picasso, Turner, Hogarth and – I wasn’t surprised to hear – Van Gogh as his favourites.

As he talks about this “dream trip” his eyes light up again. He talks animatedly, in short, sharp sentences, that are punctuated with smiles of wonderment. It’s as if, as a boy, he were being asked “what would you like to do when you grow up”. In a word, Mr Zheng, then as now, wants to “explore” – and, of course, to savour every moment while doing so. He sees the world with the eyes of someone who is in awe of the wonderful things that can be discovered. Even when he talks about topics that the vast-majority of grown-ups would consider mundane, Mr Zheng exudes excitement. It’s this boundless energy and enthusiasm that his young pupils can readily empathise with.

Mr Zheng takes his place among the small group of young children. “Right!” he enthuses, “What are we going to do today?!”.

I have just returned from a month's holiday in England. After the heat and humidity in the oven that is the Beijing summer, the cool temperatures and brisk sea breezes were blessed relief. There's nothing quite like a walk on a Norfolk beach to invigorate the soul. What's more, after returning from my morning walk and turning on the computer, I would be treated to yet another breath of fresh air. Open access to YouTube and Facebook no less!

YouTube is fantastic for young children. There are many really wonderful "learn to read" videos; and of course old favourites, like the entire Tom and Jerry library and all of the other cartoon classics. It's not that I'm against my five-year-old's favourite, Ben 10, a modern-day cartoon super-hero (who's also blazing a trail in China), but I can't help thinking that the children's programmes I watched when I was a kid were, well, much better (not to mention far less violent). So, if you want a trip down memory lane while giving your kids a treat at the same time, then YouTube is the place to be.

As a young kid in the 60s, my first memories of television are of watching Watch with Mother while eating mince pies. Watch with Mother was the BBC's flagship children's programme of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s. You'll be pleased to know that the early editions of it (copyright expires after 50 years in Britain) can be found on YouTube. So... with a tip of the hat to the BBC, I'm sure you are more than ready for me to get to the point of this article. But before I do, please allow me to ask a question:

Are you sitting comfortably?

Yes?

Then I'll begin:

Once upon a time there was a magician who could make words and images disappear. The Empress of the Land at the Centre of the Earth heard of the magician’s power and, fearful that these things could pervert her beloved children, summoned him to her palace. “You are commanded to rid this land of harmful intangibles,” said the assistants of the courtiers appointed by the minister who had been handed the Matriarch’s proclamation. The wily magician thought for a moment before conjuring up a figure from thin air. “This kind of magic doesn’t come cheap,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I will need 40 million grains of gold – paid in advance of course”. The officials did their sums and enthusiastically agreed that any price was a small price to pay for keeping the country harmonious and Mother happy.

Making words and images disappear (or “green-damning” them if you would forgive the pun) is one thing; but not nearly as impressive as removing an entire country from the lexicon. That requires very powerful magic indeed. But, the signs are that the trick to beat all tricks has been pulled off. If you are in China, try searching for news about the country that, up until 1990, was called South-West Africa on a local search engine and you could be forgiven for thinking that the place has disappeared off the map – which is odd considering that the said country is an increasingly important importer of Chinese goods and equipment.

Google China’s graph showing the number of news stories that include the country’s name, flat-lined in July and thus far in August. And, what’s more, if one tries to access China-related news about the country on the English language version of Yahoo (which, unlike the English version of Google, conforms to the protocol requirements of local search), then you will get no further than the all-too familiar error message “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage”.

Blogs and current affairs websites that flout the unwritten rules and publish “undesirable word combinations” run a very high risk of being “disappeared”. So, given that I write in China and am read by a loyal Chinese following (thanks Mr Liang and Miss Ma, much appreciated), I hope you can forgive my clumsy efforts to tiptoe around this issue (proving once again that self-censorship is the most effective form of censorship in China). Suffice to say that the followers of south-west African current affairs will of course know why Mother is not sitting comfortably.

Expunging country “X” from search engine results is the latest eddy in China’s ever-fluid censorship protocol. As recently as two years ago, even a popular British children’s Internet site, Cbeebies, was blocked. For those of you who think that Bill and Ben, Andy Pandy, and Postman Pat are stalwarts of morality who would never conspire to threaten social harmony, I urge you to put yourself in Mother’s yellow slippers. As any British five year-old could tell you, “Cbeebies” is a cunning encryption of “Children’s BBC”. From the early days of the Internet, the BBC was identified as a subversive public enemy and consequently any Internet page – Wimbledon coverage, woman’s hour recordings, proms concerts and even the shipping forecast – that included “bbc” in its website address (URL) was automatically blocked.

Last year, in a determined effort to be seen to be honouring the “censorship free Internet” commitment it had given to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) when pitching for the 2008 Games, the BBC and many previously blocked websites were unblocked. Other beneficiaries included Wikipedia and Google (both of which, up until then, had frequently fallen foul of the unwritten code of conduct).

Today is the anniversary of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and, in respect of Internet openness at least, the first year's report card isn't looking good. On the plus side, the BBC's website and Wikipedia are still up and running, but many other websites have been far less fortunate: Access to Google news (non Chinese versions, whose web crawlers are – unlike Yahoo’s – unleashed outside of China) is frequently disrupted (presently the search function doesn’t work and the photos, videos and graphics don’t appear). Google’s YouTube was disappeared in March (around the time of a sensitive anniversary) and hasn’t reappeared (my five-year old is most upset and wants to know why).

At this point, please allow me to clear something up: If you are reading this website in China, you may be wondering why the video section of this website doesn’t show any videos. The reason is that they are linked by html to YouTube, and if YouTube isn’t available, you can't see videos on this site (hence the numerous "holes").

May saw the arrival of an even more sensitive anniversary and, not coincidentally, down went Gmail and Flickr for a while. It is also clear to anyone who gets out of bed and visits the toilet in the morning that the recent disappearance of Facebook and Twitter is firmly connected to events in Xinjiang. A by-product (conspiracy theorists may disagree with this analysis) of all of these disappearances, reappearances, and further disappearances is that many home-grown (and therefore home-controlled) social network sites are now regarded by viewers, and the advertisers who chase them, as bastions of continuous connectivity, which is of course a crucially important ingredient for the success of any social networking site.

Indeed, numerous Facebook and YouTube look-alike local channels must be laughing all the way to the bank.

As for the China businesses of the international social-networking brands that created the concepts, I would be very surprised if they are sitting comfortably. I would be even more surprised if any of them lived happily ever after.

“Could I change some Chinese money please?”

“Only if you have a bank account with us.”

The same question and answer were repeated half a dozen times in an hour as I toured Manila looking for somewhere, anywhere, to change a fistful of renminbi into the local currency. Then I had an idea.

I remembered seeing a Bank of China, just around the corner. Or was it the second corner? After 30 minutes of going backwards and forwards in what I can best describe as sauna-like humidity, I found it.

The cool air inside was a blessed relief. As was the lack of customers. No ticket machines. No queues. And plenty of staff. None of whom looked up.

The guard helpfully pointed me in the direction of a desk, behind which sat a late twenty-something lady of Chinese extraction. She wore a red dress and a pretty white silk blouse with a rounded collar that was at odds with her hard expression.

“Could I change some Chinese money please?”

“Only if you have a bank account with us.”

“I do have an account with you,” I said triumphantly.

The lady looked at me with more than a hint of scepticism – it was a fully fledged scowl.

“Where’s your bank book?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have it, I’ve left it back in China”

“In China?”

“Yes, I bank with you in Beijing”.

“In that case, we can’t help you.”

“But I have an account with you, the Bank of China. Please help me.”

“I will have to ask the manager; let me have your passport”

The lady took my battered book from me without a smile and went upstairs.

In the ten minutes it took for her to walk back down the stairs I reflected on how wonderfully serene this outpost was – a marked contrast to the frenzy you would be swallowed by at a mainland branch.

The lady returned, and she had good news.

“Okay,” she said, “How much would like to change?”

“4,000 yuan please”

“We can only change 2,000 yuan at any one time”

“Does that mean I can change 2,000 yuan and come back in ten minutes to change another 2,000 yuan?”

She was not amused. “Let me check,” she said with a grimace.

Ten minutes later she returned with news, bad news.

“We can only change 2,000 RMB per day”

“But I know where there's a money changer, who will change the rest for you.”

She looked at me, puzzled, as I broke into a laughter fit. The scenario that was unfolding was surreal and had reminded me of my time in Shanghai, 12 years before, where the branches of the Bank of China had their own resident money changers who would actually wait inside the bank and compete between themselves for your business. Their exchange rates were always better than the banks that hosted them, so consequently the banks’ foreign exchange counters never seemed to transact any foreign exchange. Although, for some reason, the tellers and the branches’ security guards always took an interest when the money was being counted.

I composed myself.

“Sorry for laughing,” I said, “But no thanks. 2,000 yuan will be enough.”

I counted out the money. She then counted out the money. She counted it again. And again. “2,000 yuan,” she confirmed. “Wait a moment.”

Twenty minutes later I was still waiting. At least it gave me time to transcribe the hilarious episode onto my Nokia. But what was the problem?

After twenty-five minutes, the lady in the red dress and pretty white blouse, gestured me over to her colleague, who was sitting behind a glass counter window.

“Sign here.”

I signed against the 2,000 yuan and the agreed exchange rate.

“And sign here”

I looked at the long roll of paper that seemed to have as many numbers as a 1970s logarithm book.

“What’s this,” I asked.

“Serial numbers,” she said without a hint of humour.

It then dawned on me that the reason it had taken so long is that she had typed each note’s serial number – two letters and eight numbers – into her machine and I was being asked to confirm that the numbers were right. The 20 Chinese notes were sitting in front of her, so presumably she wanted me to do it from memory.

It was a game I couldn’t resist. “Is that number a 6 or an 8…” I said with my best feigned quizzical expression… “…Oh, I see, sorry it’s a 6.” I then signed on the dotted line, pausing to make absolutely sure that the 20th and last note’s serial number was indeed as I had remembered it.

His yellow jersey shone brightly as, head down, the red-helmeted cyclist rode towards me. I was standing by the side of the road, drinking a cold Pepsi (the full fat version in case you were wondering), and thinking that the 50km I had just cycled should have been a lot easier than it was.

Mr Liang, who had probably spotted that I, too, was riding a Giant and dressed in cycling garb (without a helmet), screeched to a halt.

“Where are you going,” he gushed.

“I’m heading for the Fragrant Hills, and then to the city, before returning to where I live, a few miles west of the airport,” I answered.

“Where’s the airport?”

It was clear that Mr Liang is not a local.

“More to the point, where are you from,” I asked.

“Inner Mongolia”.

Inner Mongolia is a very big place. I was keen to find out more.

Mr Liang, who is in his early 20s, told me that he is from a small town about 100km the “other side” of Baotou and that he had already cycled 860km (with about 40km still to go). Even more impressively, he had left home the day before. By anyone’s definition, 450km a day is a long stretch in the saddle. At an average speed of 30km an hour (a pace that’s way beyond my ability for more than an hour or so) he would have been in the saddle for an average of 15 hours a day by the time he reached his goal, “Tiananmen”.

“I’ve never been to Beijing,” he said, “I’ve often dreamed of seeing it. And I thought, why don’t I cycle there.” Mr Liang is, without knowing it, the best possible kind of endorser of Giant’s advertising tagline and company ethos, “Inspiring adventure” (better than anything they have ever paid for, to be sure).

“Can I take a photo of you and me together,” he asked. “Only if you promise to send me a copy,” I countered with a smile.

Photo taken, we exchanged email addresses and shook hands. With a cheery wave, Mr Liang continued on his way down the G110, the road that connects the capital with Baotou and way beyond to Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, about 1300km away.

I, too, felt inspired. In a flash I had made up my mind to do the following day what I had been threatening to do for a long time. To cycle all the way from Beijing to Chengde in Hebei province, weather depending of course.

Why Chengde? Well, it’s a famous mountain resort, which was the summer retreat of various Qing emperors no less. And I hadn’t been there. What’s more, it’s “only” 220km from where I live. Problem was, the last time I had cycled more than 200km in a day was more than a quarter of a century ago.

Anyhow, my determination was bolstered after a hot bath and a look at the weather forecast, which promised a cool day (possible showers) and a head-wind of no more than 10km per hour. A tail wind would have been better of course, but why make it easy for oneself?

I left quite late in the morning, knowing that this would create a bit of pressure to keep up a reasonable speed so that I could reach Chengde before dark. The first three hours were a joy – cool, quite flat, and light traffic (with minimal fumes and dust), and I was on track, averaging a little over 25km/hour.

Then I entered the mountains. I knew that Chengde lies at about 300 metres above sea level. But I had no idea just how high I would have to climb on the way there. I had conveniently scrubbed from my memory the snippet of knowledge that the highest point of the Yanshan mountains, 2118m, at Wulingshan, was not far to the east of my route. Just as well, because I don’t think I would have attempted the ride with that in mind.

It turned out that the high-point of the journey was “only” 790m, but there were two other severe climbs from about 300m to just shy of that height. Severe enough for me to wonder what I was doing in the middle of nowhere, cycling up mountains that made the Derbyshire peak district (my nemesis as a young cyclist) seem about as significant as a bump in the road.

Then it began to get darker.

It began to rain.

It then rained heavily.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it began to rain torrentially.

I had no lights, no waterproofs, and I still had about 35km to go. But, on the plus side (it pays to be optimistic in these situations) I was much higher than Chengde. There couldn’t be another climb, could there?

There wasn’t. Spurred on by the survival instinct, I raced downhill, managing an average speed of the required 35km per hour, to complete the 220km adventure in 8 hours and 40 minutes – slightly better than my 25km per hour “goal”.

Alas, my momentary triumph was deflated in more ways than one when, no sooner had I entered the city, I had a puncture.

I was soaking wet, exhausted, and aching in places I never knew I had. Having no will to mend the puncture, I persuaded the kind owner of a garage to allow me to house my Giant there for the night. I then found a hotel, a hot bath, and time for reflection.

The victory procession was a bit shorter than I had planned, but the most important thing was that I had somehow managed to cross the finish line – thanks to Giant for making such a great bike (not to mention excellent cycling shorts), and a big thanks also to Mr Liang for giving me the inspiration.

“Great to see you again!” exclaimed Xiao Gao.

I was amazed that he remembered me.

He had been the only person looking after his uncles’ studio in Beijing’s 798 art district on that cold, dark day in December 2007 when I wandered in. Beijing had been one of the stop-offs on my 10,000 mile train ride around China and his uncles, the two Gao Brothers, had been high on my wish list of people to meet. It had been a long shot. I hadn’t an appointment; I didn’t even have an address.

The 798 district was (and still is) a maze of alleyways, lined with numerous studios and shops, so it was only by some stroke of good fortune that I managed to stumble on their private studio. But that’s where my luck ended, because the famous Gao Brothers were out of town.

Their nephew, sensing my disappointment, went out of his way to make me feel welcome. He allowed me to look around the studio and even dashed out to “the gallery” to get a copy of a book on one of the Gaos’ European exhibitions I wanted to buy for a friend (leaving me alone among exhibits worth many millions of yuan).

The Gao Brothers had sprung to fame a few years earlier on the back of their Miss Mao series of sculptures. The much-larger than life-size busts, depicting The Great Helmsman with pronounced womanly characteristics was applauded by international art critics and adored by news reporters.

Gao Qiang, 47, the younger of the two, told Reuters: “During the Cultural Revolution, we used to say Mao was like the mother of China. So we decided to give mother breasts.”

The work was less warmly received by the authorities here; and the Gao Brothers were ordered to remove Miss Mao from public display shortly before the Communist Party conference in October 2007. 20 months later, the statues are still under wraps.

Xiao Gao and I chatted for a while, before he stopped in mid-sentence, as if he’d just remembered something important: “They’re here today!” he gushed. “I’ll go and tell them you are here!” With that he rushed upstairs, and in a moment was back again, offering a cheery “Please go on up!”

Needing no further encouragement, I almost ran up the stairs that leads to a private area of the gallery. As I did, I was thinking about what I would ask them. The elder of the Gao Brothers, Gao Zhen, 53, extended his hand to greet me.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked. His didi, or younger brother, joined us a few minutes later and we settled down for a thirty-or-so minute tea-fuelled chat.

“Have you seen our latest work?” Gao Zhen asked. At that he took out an eye-catching brushed metal iPhone and showed me photographs of a huge stainless steel head of Lenin (with a small Miss Mao on top of the head for reasons I wasn’t able to translate) that “took six months to create”. My friend, who was visiting from England, asked them whether they had worked on it together. The response, “We always work together on every project”, was said in a way which suggested that solo work would be unthinkable.

As if to signify their close bond, the younger brother took out an iPhone that was identical to his brother’s, and showed more pictures of their latest work while grumbling “These [iPhones] are 4,000 RMB in China [they are not available through official channels here]". "Yes..," the elder Gao continued from where his brother had left off, "...That’s far more than they cost in the US”. Intriguingly, I didn’t recognise the model of phone. (Could it be that the Gaos are using their metalwork skills to customise their own iPhones?)

I asked them how things are in their art world. If the dramatic fall in the prices of Chinese contemporary art was worrying them in any way, they certainly didn’t show it. “Things are really good,” said the younger brother, “…we’re exhibiting in Paris later this year”.

“What about the hugging,” I asked, “Any plans for more exhibitions?” At this point it’s worth noting that the brothers work in many mediums. As well as exhibiting sculptures, paintings, and photography in London, New York, Rome, San Francisco, Moscow, and many other cities, they’ve also performed what has been described as “social sculpture” at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, on London’s South Bank and even at the arboretum in Nottingham.

The success of what they call “The Utopia of the 20 minutes embrace” relies on the Gao Brothers’ ability to persuade complete strangers to hug each other. London had been thought to be a tough nut to crack – and Nottingham an even tougher one – but much to many commentators’ surprise, the stereotype of “English reserve” was blown apart. People simply loved the idea; and the vast majority of those approached actually embraced the chance to hug a stranger.

Not surprisingly, the sight of Chinese people (stereotypically even more reserved) teaching English people how to hug a complete stranger made the main UK news. The Gao Brothers were even invited to appear on the BBC's flagship news and current affairs radio programme, Today on Radio 4.

Much to the surprise and amusement of regular listeners, the programme’s normally straight-laced presenter, John Humphrys, was also persuaded to perform a live hug. (The three-minute broadcast can be heard here.)

“Yes indeed,” said the younger brother excitedly, “…We have big plans for our hugging project. This year we will go to Israel and get Palestinians and Israelis to give each other a hug”.

How wonderful that would be.

May Day isn’t quite the holiday it used to be. For many years, the 1st May was the start of the second of the annual “Golden Weeks” – public holidays lasting a full seven days. The other two seven-day holidays – Chinese New Year (in January or February depending on the phase of the moon) and the October holiday (from the 1st to the 7th October – to honour the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on the 1st October 1949) are still on the calendar. But the “May Day week” has been relegated to a three day holiday (the other days have been used to mark more traditional festivals).

But May Day is still an important holiday – in northern China particularly, where the winter seems to go on for an age. For many in this part of the country, May Day signifies the proper arrival of spring; and the attendant feel good factor is palpable.

The beaches of Beidaihe – “Beijing’s seaside resort" – were thronged with long-weekenders. The many fishing ponds around the town were packed with fisherman to the extent that it was difficult for many to swing their rods. The Olympic Park (the town’s biggest park) was buzzing; as was the Lotus Hills (the mountain park on the western edge of town). Everyone – locals and visiting Beijingers alike – was determined to make the most of the day.

As well as beach volleyball, rollerblading, football, table tennis, beachcombing, swimming, and tennis, I encountered another “sport” that belongs to quite a different league: the league of cruel sports.

It was 5.15 am.

I saw a car stop at the end of the track. From it emerged a man carrying two bird cages, each containing a single Chinese Grosbeak – whose soulful song, he hoped, would lure migrant birds into the trap he was carrying. I watched, unseen, from inside of the wood through binoculars as he set up his long “mist” net (so-called because the thread that makes up the net is so fine that birds can’t see it). Rather than intervening straight away, I decided to wait for him to finish his work. Twenty minutes later, with his trap set, he walked the 80 metres or so back to his car to wait for the first unsuspecting migrant to become tangled in the net. This was not someone catching birds to eat or to sell for a few yuan to feed his hungry family; this was a man intent on enjoying a morning’s sport.

Having waited long enough, I thought is was time for his net to bulge – but not in the way he was hoping for. I walked to the far side of the wood, so the net was closer to me than to him; and then I walked quickly up to the poles that supported the net and tore them out of the ground, before ripping the net to shreds in front of him.

He was not amused to say the least. Not only was he hurling abuse, he was running towards me with fists clenched. I then took several shots – of the photographic kind of course – while returning a volley of abuse at him.

“If you come any closer,” I shouted, “I’m going to hit you”. This literally stopped him in his tracks. He looked at me, covering his face as he did so. I took some more shots. Any thought of assaulting a foreigner – particularly one that would have seemed to him to be seriously unhinged – was dismissed and, instead of running at me, he ran to retrieve his caged birds, before marching with them across the field away from me.

As he was retreating, I reminded him of the illegality of what he was doing (interspersed with some “street Chinese” of my own) and, just to rub the salt in as it were, also told him that the police would be calling on him later that day (thanks to my relationship with some influential people in Beidaihe who care passionately about the wildlife here).

I had wrongly thought that things had moved on in my local town. The last evidence I had seen of this reprehensible activity was more than five years before. 15 years ago, it used to be widespread. But since then, even would-be bird catchers could not have failed to notice that Beidaihe is visited, every May, by scores of foreign birdwatchers who come here to witness one of the great migration spectacles in Asia – the mass movement of birds towards their Siberian breeding grounds. The local government has embraced the concept that the area is on the world map of important ornithological sites, and its tourist brochure dials up this as well as its green credentials.

So netting wild birds in Beidaihe and the surrounding area is not just illegal (as it technically is all over the country) it could also be politically damaging.

So, imagine my surprise, repulsion, and not to mention indignation, when I spotted a bird catcher on the edge of the Nandaihe “Magic Wood”. I’ve visited this fast-shrinking coastal wood in 14 of the last 15 Mays, and over the years I have found some incredible birds there (hence my naming it “Magic”); and in all of that time today's encounter was the first time I have seen a bird-catcher.

Let’s hope he tells his bird-catching friends what might happen if they go down to the woods today.

The much-vaunted four trillion yuan economic stimulus package seems to be working a treat. That is, if the queue of people waiting for a test drive in the Honda dealership were anything to go by.

The tide turned on January 20th when the government halved its earnings from purchase tax (from 10 to 5 per cent) on cars with smaller engines.

Most of the people watching TV in the Honda showroom, though, had been waiting to drive the 1.8 litre Civic, which is a splash or two higher than the 1.6 litre qualifying size. But, thanks to the marketers at Honda’s quick response, no one there was thinking that they would be losing out on the tax giveaway.

That’s because Honda are offering a 5 per cent special discount on the Civic that cancels out any perceived advantage enjoyed by manufacturers whose stables are dominated by 1.6 litre vehicles and lower.

Before my weekend tour of the car showrooms I had thought that the strong performance in March car sales had been driven by far deeper discounts than the paltry 5 per cent that is being offered by Honda. But, no matter where I tried, I found it impossible to get any offer exceeding that level.

Compared with what’s going on in other parts of the world, car sales in China are in a completely different gear. In March, passenger car sales (including SUVs and MPVs) increased to 772 thousand. That’s 27 per cent more than in February and more than ten per cent compared with the same month last year.

The figures further consolidate China’s position as the world’s biggest auto market – a position it has now held for three consecutive months. If China is motoring ahead, then the US is in reverse gear – and a high ratio one at that (last month, vehicle sales were down 37 per cent year-on-year).

“How was the test drive”, I asked Ms Zhou, who had her eye on a bright red Honda Civic.

“It’s too busy,” she said, “I couldn’t even get out on to the public road”.

The sprawling area of more than 20 car showrooms in eastern Beijing was indeed jammed with would-be car buyers and an increasing number of people who think that the time is now right to trade up to a better car.

The days when large sedans dominated the roads, and when black Audis with blacked-out windows took their places in front of the swankier restaurants, are long gone however. These days, people are choosing a car based on their lifestyle requirements; although status of course still plays a part (where in the world is that not the case?).

But, in China, the nature of status is changing. Size, although still important, is a less weighty factor in the decision-making process than it was. Style, technology, and safety are contributing increasingly more “points” to the buying decision.

This changing attitude is just one of the factors that is driving the growth in smaller cars. In the first quarter of this year, 1.41 million cars at 1.6 litres and below were sold in China – that’s seven out of every ten new cars.

Ms Zhou, though, was determined to do her bit to help the ‘above 1.6 litre’ category.

“I will buy it [the Honda Civic] because it has a very advanced engine,” she said, “…and I just love the styling”. But, just as important, she confided, “the five per cent discount means that I pay the same tax as if I were to buy a 1.6”.

Somehow, her mind had been made up before the test drive. Which is just as well, because she was only able to get the Honda’s “advanced engine” into third gear before the sheer weight of traffic visiting Beijing’s “car city” slowed her down to a crawl.

Spring is in the air.

A young “bride” – one of more than 10 million young ladies who will tie the knot this year in China – poses for a wedding photographer in Beijing's Chaoyang Park. Except that she's not yet married. In China, the official wedding photographs are taken before the wedding, and are displayed – poster size – at the wedding reception.

Despite the downturn in the economy, the country's wedding photographers are struggling to keep up with the demand. In fact, at this time of year, you have to be careful where you tread when you go for a walk in China's public parks. Not because of anything a dog has left behind (dogs aren't allowed in), but because of the profusion of wedding dress trains that are seemingly everywhere you turn.

Couples from the “no siblings” generation that have been planning to get married, are not, it seems, letting the economic downturn affect their plans.

This group of people, born in the decade following the 1979 introduction of the jìhuà shēngyù zhèngcè (the mostly one child "family planning policy") have, over the years, not enjoyed a very good press. They have been variously described (not by this correspondent I hasten to add) as “China’s spoiled generation”, or “Little Emperors [or Empresses]”. According to the stereotype, they are used to getting their way.

My view is that the vast majority of those among this generation who have “got their way” have done so not because they were handed it on a silver platter – but by striving for it. And, funnily enough, when you’ve worked so hard for something, you can’t help but feel that there are certain things that you bloody well deserve. A good wedding is, and will always be, high on that list.

But there is another, far more positive reason why people are continuing with their plans to get married:

Wedding statistics tend to reflect the optimism or otherwise of a nation’s young people. That being the case, China’s future is looking bright. In 2008 – despite the equivalent of three trillion US dollars being wiped off the Shanghai stock exchange – 10.6 per cent (more than a million) more couples married than in 2007.

That optimism is, not surprisingly, also shared by the people associated with China’s wedding industry, which (according to the latest figures available from the Ministry of Commerce and the China Wedding Industry Investigation and Research Centre) is worth something in the order of 13 per cent of GDP.

If the mood at last week's wedding expo in Beijing is anything to go by, then the industry’s contribution to 2009 GDP is likely to be greater. More than one thousand companies associated with the industry attended the three-day wedding-fest and – if press reports are anything to go buy – most were very pleased they made the effort to exhibit. According to the China Daily, the 34,000 couples who attended spent 29 million yuan there – 30 per cent more than was spent last year. One of the most successful companies, Perfect & Decorated, a wedding gown and makeup chain, took 1.2 million yuan worth of orders.

That’s not to say that couples (and their parents who support them) are spending money like confetti. The harder times have made soon-to-be-weds more cost-conscious than ever. It’s a matter of prioritisation though – the things that will be most memorable tend to get more of the budget.

At the expo, the China Daily spoke with Sun Jingjing, a 26-year-old human resources assistant at a local company in Beijing, who is getting married in October. Ms Sun cancelled the wedding motorcade, but not to “save” money. Instead, she used the "saving" to have a wedding dress designed and hand made.

"I didn't cut my budget, but I will spend the money on the right things," she told the China Daily.

As well as the right wedding dress and a picture-perfect set of photographs, the right things also include a honeymoon (France is doing particularly well); wedding sweets (a traditional gift for the guests); and of course the wedding ring. And, in China, the ring that’s being slipped on the finger is far more likely to be made of platinum than of gold (last year, according to an industry report, China accounted for 68 per cent of global platinum sales).

Marriage, it seems, is a joyous occasion not just for the happy couple.

This morning, I continued in a different battered taxi as far west as you can go in this part of China, to the very small border town of Nabang, which is separated from Burma by a stream that is no more than a couple of yards wide. Bizarrely, it seemed that more people were crossing between the two countries on planks of wood bridging this, than were crossing at the official border just down the track. Things just seem to work differently in Nabang – as you might expect from a place that is just a bit further away than the back of beyond.

If a foreign brand can make it here of all remote places, then it’s a pretty good indication that they’ve cured one of the biggest headaches afflicting foreign brands – distribution to “lower tier China”.

So, then, which brands have actually passed the Nabang Test?

The first question I felt I had to answer is “what foreign-branded chocolate bars are on the shelves?”.

This is an important consideration for me – and I must declare a vested interest – because Dove chocolate is my staple diet on trips like this (it can add up to 10KM to my daily walking range). I am in luck. Not only do they have a good stock of “in date” (important to check) Dove, but there’s also a full box of Snickers (same Mars stable as Dove). My walks in the mountains are set to be that bit more pleasurable (as well as longer).

There is Coke of course (one of the first foreign brands to crack lower tier distribution in China); but there is also Pepsi (I’ve noticed that in recent years they have been making serious in-roads into lower tier China). And, what’s this? There's also Red Bull?! As well as high profile Formula One sponsorship they are clearly also investing in grass roots distribution management. Another surprise is Nestle coffee, and its sister, Coffee-mate. I hadn’t noticed them on my trip here last year, so they may well be newcomers to these parts. There’s also a good stock of big packs of Nestle chocolate wafer biscuits (a bit too big for my rucksack alas).

In the detergent category, Proctor & Gamble (the masters of lower-tier distribution) have managed to get an impressive stack of Tide onto the shelves (the only foreign representative in this category, and sold in the smaller, cheaper bags).

Spending a bit more to look after your clothes is one thing but, surveying the shelves, it’s clear that people here are prepared to spend a lot of money on foreign brands when it comes to looking after their appearances.

And, judging by their share of shelf, the brands that are shining as brightly as the buyers' teeth, hair and skin are Colgate, and Crest (Proctor & Gamble) toothpastes; Lux (Unilever), Rejoice and Pantene Pro-V (both Proctor & Gamble) shampoos; and Olay (you guessed it... Proctor and Gamble again) and Avon skin care products. Both Olay and Avon have an incredibly wide range of products on display and Avon have even managed to post several items of point-of-sale material – a rare thing in these parts.

I watched Ms Peng, a thirty-five year old mother of two, reading the boxes of various Olay products.

“Sorry, do you mind if I ask you a question,” I asked.

“Why do you like Olay?”

“I want to look after my skin, of course."

I thought I should probe further (!)...

“But why Olay?”

She spelled it out for me: “Everyone knows that Olay is a world famous brand you can trust. When it comes to protecting my skin, I will pay more to get the best”.

“What about foreign shampoos? Do you ever use them?,” I asked.

“I sometimes buy them, but usually I buy local brands”.

In my discussion with Ms Peng, I learnt enough to confirm that she will not compromise on skin care because the ultra-violet rays in these parts are thought to be particularly "lihai" ("aggressive") – I already have a sunburnt neck to prove the point. I also gleaned that she thought that a foreign-brand shampoo was a “special treat”, as opposed to a “necessity”.

Talking of necessities, I purchased two bars of Dove chocolate and a Snickers bar for my hike in the mountains tomorrow. Which is, I hasten to add, one bar of Dove more than my normal daily intake (when walking long distances that is).

Then again, I am planning to walk an exceptionally long way tomorrow, perhaps more than 30KM (1.5KM of which will be a climb in altitude), in search of very rare and elusive hornbills.

You see, no matter where you are, when there’s so much at stake, only certain brands will do.

China is a land of incredible extremes.

Last week I was in Beijing. At the start of the week, a cool wind from the north kept temperatures at or below the seasonal average of the low-teens (centigrade); then on Wednesday (the 18th) something very strange happened. The temperature hit an incredible 29.2 degrees. The hottest March temperature there for 59 years.

There are numerous examples of extreme climatic variation and differences. One of the most extreme is the contrast between the winter temperatures in Heilongjiang and Hainan. While sunbathers are basking in temperatures nudging 30C on the beaches of the tropical island of Hainan; their compatriots in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang are wrapping up like Michelin men to protect themselves from minus 30C.

You can choose whatever measure you like – culture, altitude, attitudes, the economy, zoology, geography, art, education standards, household income… (go on… really, whatever you like…) – and you could be almost certain that the two poles of the given category will be miles apart.

The variation in household income is as extreme as the above climatic contrasts. For example, in the first nine months of 2008, the average rural household income in Gansu province (the country’s poorest region) was 1,952 yuan – or just above seven yuan per day (about US$1); while the average Shanghai urban household (the richest part of mainland China) earned the equivalent of 225 yuan a day (or about US$32). A 32 times difference is quite something, but compare the top ten per cent of Shanghai urban households and the bottom ten per cent of Gansu rural households and you begin to get the idea of just how extreme the extremes are – particularly if you compare the figures after spending on essentials has been removed.

The differences in discretionary spending power are simply enormous; but that’s not to say that some people in the rural areas of the further flung regions of China are not able and willing to pay a significant premium for foreign brands. The size of this group varies greatly by region, area, and district, but suffice to say that even in the most unlikely of places, certain foreign brands are selling like hot dumplings (or cakes if you prefer).

When it comes to remote places, Yunnan province (which, in terms of rural income, ranks the 4th poorest region in China) has more than its fair share…

This morning, I touched down at Tengchong airport, in western Yunnan. It’s one of those airports that is either difficult to land at, or downright impossible to (in which case you have to do a U turn and fly back to Kunming, the provincial capital). The peculiar topography of the area, which is in the lower levels of the Gaoligong mountains, make for an entertaining (for any masochists on board) final approach. The pilot was battling the strong winds and unpredictable updrafts right up to the moment the wheels of the China Eastern flight bounced on to the tarmac. Usually, in these situations, you can comfort yourself with the thought that the pilot “must have done this a thousand times before”. Not so with pilots flying in to Tengchong I’m afraid. The airport was opened on the 16th of last month – and has the worrying distinction of being the newest airport in China.

After calming my nerves, I grabbed a battered taxi, which somehow looked incongruous parked outside the shiny-new airport terminal. We headed west, towards Burma. And, four hours later, I finished the long day in a remote part of rural western Yunnan, chatting with a couple of farmers about the water levels of their local river.

Talking of extremes and contradictions… only 12 hours earlier, I had been in one of the country’s oldest airports – Hongqiao – in super-rich Shanghai.

“Could I have a Barbie passport please?” I asked the pink-jacketed sales assistant. Smiling, but without a hint of sarcasm, she asked for my name and date of birth.

“No, it’s not for me; it’s for my five year old daughter”.

That straightened out, I was asked to take her over to the Barbie photo studio for her “glam shot”.

“I’m afraid she’s in Beijing,” I replied.

“No problem, she can have her photo taken when she comes to Shanghai.”

The lady said it as if it were an incontrovertible certainty that my daughter will make the pilgrimage to Barbie’s pink palace on Huaihai Zhong Lu. And the extreme likelihood is that she will be proved right sooner rather than later. The exact timing will depend on how quickly I show her the photos I took today – not to mention her shiny pink Barbie passport of course. When she realises what’s here for her in Shanghai, I’m sure that Hong Kong Disney will be relegated from top-spot on her wish list of places to visit; and that she will start taking a keen interest when she next hears I’m off to Shanghai on business.

The Barbie store in Shanghai is the world’s first Barbie “experience centre”. The grand opening was last Friday, timed to coincide with Barbie’s 50th birthday.

This emporium of pink pleasure provides young (and young-at-heart) girls with six floors of eye-popping displays and activities. Why not take a day to test out the Barbie anthem’s claim that “In a Barbie world, life is plastic, it’s fantastic”:

You could start by having a Barbie makeover in the beauty centre. Then why not try on a few new outfits and show them off to an admiring audience as you strut your stuff on the runway. Or what about spending some time chatting online to your American friends in the computer room (pink of course); before stopping by at the professional-standard photo-studio to pose while seated on a large pink throne (plastic may be fantastic, but purists will be relieved to know that this material doesn’t feature in the camera they use here – the Nikon D200 has a die-cast magnesium alloy body).

If you fancy a work-out, or even a yoga class, there’s a large dance studio with wall to ceiling mirrors. And, when it all gets a little too much, you could always retreat to the reading room. By which time, you will undoubtedly be ravenous, so you’ll need to make your way to the top of the shop – the 6th floor – to dine at the Barbie restaurant that was, according to the Barbie press office, “created at the direction of renowned chef and chocolatier David Laris”, who put together a menu, “designed for divas of all ages”. Not feeling spoilt enough? Then, you’ll be needing a facial, or perhaps a body wrap or massage at the Barbie spa (“designed to rejuvenate and transform Shanghai women into urban princesses”).

By now, you will probably be thinking that you would like to buy a few things. Shanghai’s House of Barbie has something for everyone, no matter what your budget may be. You could spend just a few yuan on a Barbie book; or for those of you who could afford to build your own pink palace there’s the 280,000 yuan diamond necklace. Then again, you could use the same mountain of cash to buy something a little less showy. Let’s see now… 280,000RMB… How about his and hers Honda Civics (price not including Barbie and Ken sun visors).

As for me, I settled on a Barbie early-reading book; and the three princesses and their sparkly horses from Barbie’s latest blockbuster film.

This is where the Barbie passport came in handy. The 20 yuan cost of the passport was redeemed and I also received a 5 per cent discount off the total price. As well as my first stamp in the passport (a full page of stamps qualifies for a special free gift no less). I handed over the required number of appropriately-coloured 100 yuan notes (the flagship note here – in China that is – is indeed Barbie-pink. How’s that for a marketing coup).

I descended the spiral staircase – the walls of which showcase no fewer than 875 signature hand-made and individually styled Barbies – feeling that I had just had one of the greatest retail experiences in the history of shopping.

Imagine what a five-year old would think.

Mum and her daughter run to catch the boat back to the Shanghai "mainland"

The taxi driver’s puzzled look told me that I was in for a much longer journey than I had planned. “Where to??” he repeated.

I spoke more slowly: “To Chongming Island”.

“Which port?” he asked.

“Not to a port; please take me to the island. I want to go to Dongtan in the east; very close to the main highway.”

“Which port?” he repeated, with more than a note of exasperation in his voice.

I was beginning to raise my voice: “Please take me to the island via the bridge; I don’t want to go by boat”.

“There isn’t a bridge; there’s a tunnel,” he said with a grimace.

“Then please take me to the island via the tunnel,” I pleaded.

“I can’t. It won’t be open until next year!"

This stopped me in my tracks. The map I’d bought only the day before clearly showed a bridge – or maybe it was a tunnel after all – linking the Shanghai “mainland” with Chongming island and another bridge (tunnel?) connecting the island with Jiangsu province. I showed the taxi driver the map.

“That’s right,” he said, “that’s what they say is going to happen”.

“Sorry,” I said, realising that my map was “before date” as opposed to “out of date”.

“In that case please take me to the port”

“Which port?” he asked.

We eventually arrived at Wusong, which is the closest port to the centre of Shanghai and I bought a ticket for the next fast boat to Chongming Island, which would take about 50 minutes to cross the Yangtze. I had about 40 minutes to wait, which was just enough time to buy a thick tracksuit top in a nearby shop (it was much colder than I thought it would be). The hydrofoil docked on the island, and in a few minutes I had negotiated a round-trip to Dongtan nature reserve and four hours waiting time for about the same price that the same driver had initially wanted for just taking me there.

Chongming island falls under the jurisdiction of Shanghai and holds a population of about two-thirds of a million people. If plans for an eco-city there are to be believed, then up to another half million people could be added to that figure in the next several years. It’s never been very clear though just how eco-friendly the eco-city will be – indeed many environmentalists have been up in arms since development plans were announced because the area that has been ear-marked is very close to a nature reserve of international importance (the very reserve that I visited today). Although, having said that, things have gone a bit quiet on the development front since one of the main supporters of the project in the local government fell spectacularly from grace.

On the plus side, Chongming island is getting bigger by the day; soil washed down from Yangtse is attaching itself to the island at an impressive rate. Indeed, the New Scientist reported in 2006 that the land area of the island had doubled in size since 1950 – and is now more than 100km long by about 30 wide.

Funnily enough, walking around Dongtan nature reserve and watching the reed harvestmen (most of whom are migrant workers from Anhui) plying their trade as they sing their haunting melodies to coax their reed-pulling water buffalos forward, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’ve been caught up in a time warp that has whisked you back to the 50s – the 1850s that is.

This place is the proverbial million miles away from downtown Shanghai and its boutiques and bars. Let’s hope it stays that way.

A call on Monday changed my plans for the week. I put down the phone with a smile. Instead of freezing in Beijing, I instead flew to Shenzhen in Guangdong province the following morning for a business meeting in the afternoon. The temperature in Shenzhen was in the high twenties and the contrast with Beijing could not have been more marked. Beijing really is an inhospitable place in the winter.

So, faced with the prospect of flying back to the frigid north or staying in the pleasantly-warm south, there’s no prize for guessing which option I took. The only question that remained was, where in the south should I go? I toyed with the idea of flying to Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan – a place I have been to twice before – which is a great place to spend a few days (there’s even an outside chance of seeing wild elephants there). But the flight was via Kunming, the provincial capital, and so would take about three hours. The best option, I decided on my way to Shenzhen airport, was to take the short hop over to Sanya, in southern Hainan (China’s most southerly province and a popular island tourist destination) – a flight time of not much more than an hour. I had visited Hainan twice before, but had never had time to do any birding there.

I arrived at Shenzhen airport three hours early, with the intention of dropping my bag there and venturing out to find some birds nearby. The golf course to the north had some good habitat, and so I spent a couple of hours walking around its fringes and the wasteland next to the airport’s perimeter fence – a little noisy perhaps, but I saw some quite nice birds.

The flight was delayed by an hour and a half and so it was gone 11pm by the time I stepped out into Sanya airport’s modern terminal building. In front of me was a large map of the island; which was just as well because I hadn’t had time to do any desk research on exactly where to go. I remembered that there is a famous nature reserve called Baihualing, but wasn’t sure where it was. One look at the map made me realise that it was far too far from Sanya to make a trip there feasible (To go there, it would have been far better to have flown to Haikou, in the north of the island).

I had a fuzzy recollection that there was a reserve much closer to Sanya – the name of which, “Jianfengling”, had kindly been confirmed by SMS by a birding friend back in Beijing. And there it was on the map, no more than two hours drive to the north-west. I checked in to the hotel opposite the airport for a few hours sleep, before rendezvousing at 6am with the car that I had arranged through the hotel’s concierge as I was checking-in. Two hours later I arrived at the forest lodge at Jianfengling, where I stayed two nights.

My time there was nothing short of wonderful. I managed to see 21 species and sub-species of bird that occur only on Hainan island, including some very special “firsts” for me (the “Wild Side” section of this site has some of the photos of the them). I also managed to walk more than 50km, and lose quite a few pounds in weight (as well as a layer of skin on various parts of my body that would eventually peel off – the ultra-violet rays here are a bit of a shock to skin that’s spent most the past six months much further north).

And so, with a broad smile, I said goodbye to the reserve staff at 10am this morning (promising to return in the not too distant future) and headed back to Sanya. I had booked a later flight back to Beijing so I could take a detour to one of China’s top tourist attractions. As well as a good place for people-watching it transpired that Tianya Haijiao is also a good place to watch birds – I managed to complete the full set of 10 Chinese-occurring sunbirds by adding Olive-backed Sunbird to my list.

Tianya Haijiao, which means something like “The end of the sky and the corner of the earth” is a must-visit site for visitors to Hainan. As well as being the most southerly point of the Chinese mainland (despite Hainan being an island), the place is immortalised by a number of ancient poems that recount the poignant tale of two lovers who, under pressure from their respective families to end their relationship, flee to the furthest point in the world in an attempt to stay together. Alas, they are tracked down and, rather than surrender to the approaching agents of their families, throw themselves into the sea in a sort of Romeo and Juliet finale. But, this being Chinese folklore, the story ends with a dramatic twist when the Thunder God, impressed by the two lovers’ devotion to each other, sends down a thunder bolt that hits the entwined lovers at the moment they jump into the sea. The magical power of the bolt turns them to stone and thus they are able to remain together for eternity. These symbolic rocks have become the focal point of Tianya Haijiao and attract countless numbers of couples from all over China and beyond who come here to reaffirm their undying love for each other.

Bizarrely, every year hundreds of couples arrive here to enjoy the “International Wedding Festival”. They gather on the beach in their wedding clothes and participate in a number of activities including the piggy back race to the sea. (The bride jumps on her groom's back, who races towards the lovers’ stones.)

I asked one couple there what they thought about the place. Ms Zhang and Mr Yang are from Haerbin in Heilongjiang – one of the coldest places in winter in China (famous for its ice festival). Ms Zhang recounted the story of the lovers and said how much she had been looking forward to visiting here. Mr Yang nodded respectfully as his wife spoke. “And also,” he said, “The weather here is great this time of year!”.

It was all arranged. After four nights in Shanghai, I would travel back to Beijing on Friday evening – arriving in time for dinner. And then, on Saturday, I would enjoy a Valentine’s day with my wife. What could possibly go wrong, I naively thought.

Life is full of uncertainties, but life in China seems to deliver more than one’s fair share of them. At 2pm on Friday afternoon my plan was changed. And it wasn’t a slight change either. Instead of flying north to Beijing that evening, I would be flying south to Guangdong province’s “special economic zone” of Shenzhen, which is just across the bay from Hong Kong. And instead of meeting my family for a Friday evening dinner, I would be presenting some ideas to someone from one of China’s leading technology companies.

The arrangement edged into what I can only describe as the surreal, when I realised that the meeting would start after midnight.

I was picked-up at the airport and, by 12.30am, the meeting was underway. At 3.15am, handshakes all round signalled that it was, at last, time to check into my hotel. I’ve been in China for so long that I’ve somehow been able to cultivate a tolerance level – at odds with my genetic make-up – that enables me to shrug off minor irritations. But the next thirty minutes would have even tested the patience of Job.

It took three return visits to the check-in desk to get a room card that worked. And when I at last managed to get the door open, I wished I hadn’t bothered. It was literally at eye-level with a rather busy overpass. Shenzhen doesn’t sleep, so even at 4am, it was like being in a track-side hospitality box at Silverstone on Grand Prix day.

I was too tired to even contemplate changing my room, so I put the television on, hoping the drone of CNN or BBC World would enable me to forget the decibel level outside of the window. But the TV wasn’t working.

Things couldn’t get any worse I thought. Until, that is, I flushed the toilet. The handle came away in my hand and, with it, water sprayed everywhere. I managed to stop the surge of water; and was left with nothing worse than a very noisy water tank (that refused to fill despite its cacophonous efforts to do so).

Strangely, the noise from the bathroom seemed to neutralize the road noise, and with about eighty decibels coming from either direction, it was not unlike being in a sleeper carriage of a Chinese train. Last year I did 10,000 miles on Chinese trains in a month and never had any problem getting to sleep, so I gave it a try.

I woke up at 8am. The noise levels were exactly the same, but I had somehow managed to sleep soundly for four hours. I went downstairs to politely ask for a change of room. The new room was perfect – except, that is, for a used condom on the floor that the cleaner had somehow failed to notice. But, at least, it was wonderfully quiet.

By 9am I was in a taxi and heading for Hongshu Park – the “red tree” mangrove bird sanctuary. The area hosted a magnificent array of birds – of particular note was the flock of about 60 Black-faced Spoonbills (one of the rarest birds on the planet); and tens of thousands of various ducks and waders, which were making the most of the low-tide.

I visited the public area first, which was also great for people watching. And, being Valentine’s Day, there was plenty to look at. Valentine’s Day is widely celebrated in China and one could see from the number of couples walking hand in hand that the marauding bands of rose-sellers – Shenzhen’s entrepreneurs are never slow to spot an opportunity – were well-placed for a busy day.

But Miss Zheng, a migrant worker from Hunan province, who’d invested a sizable amount in 30 roses, was feeling less confident.

“I’ve only sold three all morning,” she lamented. “It’s a disaster… I guess [the slow traffic is] because of the poor economy”.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure business will be better this afternoon,” I reassured her.

“How do you know?” she said, “You’re only trying to make me feel better”.

“Afternoons are more romantic than mornings,” I joked.

Miss Zheng didn’t think it was funny.

I tried to placate her. “Really; when it becomes obvious that quite a few girls have roses then the ones that haven’t will soon make sure that their boyfriends buy one for them. It will swing really quickly.”

“Would you like to buy one?” she asked.

“If you haven’t sold at least two-thirds of them by the time the sun sets, then I’ll buy at least one,” I promised.

I then spent the next five hours walking several miles around the paved paths of the bird reserve (despite the patrolling police and soldiers). Somehow, the sight of my camera with a long lens and me mouthing “sshhh!”, with a raised finger in front of my mouth, deterred people in uniforms from getting close enough to ask me to leave.

I returned to the promenade as the sun was going down. As expected, there were now dozens upon dozens of young ladies clutching beautiful red roses.

There was no sign of Ms Zheng, who had most-probably managed to sell all of her roses and head off home for an early dinner.

I checked with another seller – Mr Deng – who had just a few roses left.

“Business was good,” he said, “It was slow in the morning, but really picked up”.

I was happy that my hunch had been right, but I was left hoping that business in Beijing hadn't been quite so brisk.

The key question, of course, is... would there be any roses left at the airport when I arrive home tomorrow?

Fingers crossed.

Sweetcorn seller in Qinhuangdao: "I make the same money, I just have to stay out longer"

I arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday afternoon, having flown from Beijing where the temperature was an unwelcoming minus 10 degrees Celsius. Shanghai was 15 degrees warmer and, in the bright sunshine, one could have been forgiven for thinking that Spring is just around the corner. Wednesday was spectacularly clear; the blue sky was bluer than any of the numerous blue skies I have seen in this city over the years. It was certainly the sharpest possible contrast with the weather I had to endure on my last visit here, in January 2008, when the heavens opened for the length of my stay. But, more to the point, what of the mood of the city? Bright, like the weather that greeted me this time round; or grey with perhaps brooding clouds on the horizon?

The city's vital statistics are indeed slowing down. Reuters, for instance, reports that: “Shanghai [is] set for [its] lowest growth in 17 years”. But this is a slow-down with Chinese characteristics. Those who read past this doomsaying headline would have been surprised by its negativity, because the full story is that Han Zheng, the mayor of Shanghai, has said that the city’s GDP growth in 2009 is forecast to drop to… wait for it… “nine per cent”! It’s also reported that the mayor said that “2008 was a difficult year for Shanghai’s economic development”. All the figures aren’t in yet, but it’s thought that the 2008 end-of-year figure is likely to around 10%. Outside of China, it’s hard to believe that any other city’s mayor would be bemoaning a double-digit growth.

Judging by the proliferation of construction projects I’ve seen around town, it seems that the city’s chiefs have been digging deep into their municipal reserves to ensure that Shanghai’s fire continues to burn brightly. It's as if a good few flocks of cranes – that had moved north to Beijing several years ago – to help that city get its infrastructure into shape for the Olympics, have now returned to their "natural" home.

In the past few days, I’ve spoken to a broad section of people – from brand managers to club owners; from students to a DJ; and from taxi drivers to a construction worker; and the mood, although somewhat cautious when the time frame of “the next 12 months” is mentioned, is still decidedly optimistic. As one taxi driver, Mr Zhang, told me: “China has survived the most terrible hardships in the past 100 years, what’s happening now is nothing. We’ll easily get through it.” Taxi drivers the world over seem have their fingers on their city’s or country’s pulse, so Mr Zhang’s views are certainly worth listening to.

Another “taxi test” is the supply-demand equation (available taxis vs waiting punters). Judging by the dearth of cabs displaying “For Hire” signs in the evening in this city, it seems that Shanghai doesn’t have too much to worry about. A few evenings ago I walked for two hours and didn’t see a single taxi with an illuminated sign – much to the chagrin of the numerous people waiting in the cold night air for tens of thousands of drivers to finish their extended evening slots with their families. Taxi drivers, at least, are in no rush to work extra hours for a little bit more financial security.

But what about the mood in the rest of the country? No doubt that people are being laid off in droves and that many, many more are fearing for their jobs. No doubt also that consumer confidence indices are down; and that people are generally pessimistic about the next 12 months. But when one asks people what they feel about “the future”, rather than about the short term, one tends to get a rather different response. One of the best places to find and to talk to Chinese people from outside of Shanghai is the Bund (the area that runs for about a mile, adjacent to the Huang Po river – directly opposite the skyscrapers of Pudong).

It was there I met three friends, each in their mid-twenties. They were from different places, had pursued very different careers, but they spoke as one about the future. Now, although they were what consumer research companies would call “a good qualitative group”; as a group of three, their opinion obviously cannot possibly be held to be representative of “young people in China”. I will have to have the same outcome in a few dozen more of these types of discussions, in many different places, before being in any position to claim that the hypothesis that I’m unfolding here has any statistical robustness. But, nonetheless, my instinct tells me that I was hearing the voice of the young people of China:

“Of course times are really difficult,” said Mr Li, a pipe salesman from Xian, Sha’anxi province.

“A few people have been laid off in my company, so of course I’m worried”.

His friend, Miss Wang, from Xiangfan in Hubei province, who is a salesperson for a wholesaler of mobile phones, nodded in agreement. Miss Cao, from Nanyang in Henan, was expressionless. She is a state kindergarten teacher, and the only one of the three who has complete job security in these times.

“Yes, the world is in a mess,” said Miss Wang. Miss Cao was quick to jump in on this:

“Yes, so many problems… the global recession, the problems in Palestine…”

“Some say there’s going to be a war in the Middle East,” responded Miss Wang.

“No there won’t be,” said Mr Li, “there’s too much to lose”. “Mr Obama, won’t let that happen.”

It was wonderful to listen to these young people talk so animatedly and knowingly about world affairs – thanks due to the Internet of course, not to mention the decision to fast-track its roll-out.

Mr Li was on a roll: “Obama will save the world. But even so it’s going to be a difficult 2009 for all of us.”

They all nodded.

But when the subject turned to “their future”, there was a very different response.

“The economic problems in China are short term,” said Miss Cao.

“Yes,” said Mr Li, “short term…”

“…We Chinese have come a long way. These present difficulties won’t set us back. It’ll just make us stronger”. All three of them nodded.

That was a few hours ago.

On the way to Nanjing Lu – Shanghai’s shopping magnet – I thought about how to summarise these comments (in case you were wondering, yes indeed, it took almost an hour to find a taxi!).

I’ve come up with the following line that captures the spirit of these three friends (as well as, I believe, encapsulating the general mood of young people in this country):

“Despite the current adversity… YES, WE CAN!”

---