Has anyone really lived until they have wandered by the world famous Westlake in Hangchow whilst watching the sunset and listening to Greensleeves piped melodiously from out of the public musack system.

My first tentative steps into the largest country on earth, a mere 1.3 billion people, were taken in November 2003. Hopefully it shall prove the first of many journeys but by necessity it was a visit that could only scratch the surface. In fact I shall never do more than that, but I would love to get try and get under the skin of China. What on earth makes the place tick, what keeps it together, how has it got so far and where does it go next. These questions kept going through my head on this all too brief trip.

Looking for answers is exercising greater minds than mine and is probably being discussed at Davos as I speak (along with the nature of happiness?!). Where does it go is the easiest in my view, in much the same way that a boulder rolling down a mountain gains speed till terminal velocity so China moves forward inexorably. This should not surprise a toothless, granny in her dotage in an old people's home in Vermont. In 1853 China and India comprised 47% of the global economy. How long before half the world's population once again have half the world's resources? China will very soon overtake the UK in terms of GNP, well what on earth is shocking about that. China is a cool 26 times larger than the UK. When China's GNP per head starts reaching the UK's levels then we can start gasping because that will be the

new world order we have all been waiting for. It is bloody staggering that for two/three centuries a country of 50 odd million has had a GDP higher than that of a billion plus (OK so China was about 400m in the 19^th century but still)! That is surely the definition of first mover advantage writ large; as the world corrects this imbalance in the next century the political map will evolve, a dawn of the true pacific century. The project for the new American century, this Pax (Pax or Bellum?) Americana may not last the century out.

I digress; China Eastern Airlines ferried me the relatively short distance from Singapore to Shanghai, from the old frontier to the new. It was a fairly uneventful trip aside from passing a car in flames in the middle of the highway from the airport. We drove past before the police or fire brigade arrived and we could feel the heat from the vehicle. I spent the first night in Shanghai and had time to visit some of the lau wai infested hollows of the cavernous metropolis. The highlight for me was naturally watching Arsenal beat Leeds four one in a Jazz bar in the near Fuxing Park.

The second day was somewhat more cultural with a trip to Hangchow. A journey illuminated by a chat with someone from Jamaica who was in China teaching English. Naturally we talked somewhat about the differences between China and Jamaica, can there be two more culturally opposite lands on earth? He had the same observations that most long-term lau wais have. First they discuss the spitting (I mean get over it chaps it is not going away) then the bureaucracy (not that Jamaica or even the States is short on that) and the devotion to study displayed by the kids (as noble as it is terrifying). We also discussed the Chinese mentality which he observed (and he is hardly the first) is not questioning and is very structured. It appears to leave children and indeed adults without the reasoning and problem solving skills that the streetwise kids from the west have. It is a common thesis but does it do justice to the complex cultural and historical forces that make up the Eastern psyche as such? Though the thesis has merits and evidence is there a danger that it is used to justify suppressive government. 'oh that suppressive model fits oriental culture' (is that dangerously lazy?) I thought upon these matters as China's growth and its changes played themselves out in front of me. Is it the system that perpetuates the rigidity of thought for political/social engineering reasons, is it really a part of Asian culture as such.

Hangchow or Hangzhou if one is keen on the modern Pinyin (which I along with Chris Patten am not!) is the number one tourist spot in China for Chinese people but thankfully relatively free of dabizi such as me. This impression I had was confirmed by a local chappy who waylaid me by the lake. He liked to talk with Westerners to improve his English but he admitted that few were in Hangchow. His other interesting characteristic was that he seemed to have no legs (it was dark and I did not wish to examine to closely) and had an interesting cross between wheelchair and tricycle (powered by his arms) to propel himself. He was keen to access the BBC website and asked me how. Interestingly a lot of websites are blocked in china. In fact this website is blocked in China and I believe it is because it has Free in the title. Freeservers.com!

Hangchow is very beautiful, the Westlake is famous throughout China and is impressive. The vista of the lake and distant hills by day is a bucolic idyll and by night the lake is lit up spectacularly, a great pleasure to sip coffee (or the famous Longjing Cha) by the lake and watch the light display in the cool evening. Oh and music is piped everywhere, mostly traditional Chinese fare with a bit of Greensleeves and other international classics. I spent my first day just strolling around and taking it all in. The second day I went to flying eagle peak to see the Lingyin temple in the hills above the lake.

I reached there only after being temporarily kidnapped and taken to a tea farm where I was sold some of the local longing cha. I say kidnapped as the taxi driver asked me if I liked tea (yes I managed to work that out) and when I said yes (about some things one just cannot lie) then I was whisked off to the farm, I of course did not know that until we stopped. This was however the only moment of hard-sell I experienced in China. The only other troublesome moment was that no taxi would take me back to town for reasons unknown so I walked the few miles (downhill happily) between the temple and Hangchow. The salient point is that travelling round China is a breeze, far easier than say India in fact easier than Western Europe. In general people are very warm, friendly and helpful. Whenever struggling with an all Chinese menu I would have all the waiters and waitresses around trying to help me understand what I was ordering, they need not have bothered I would happily try everything. In the city all the taxis were on the metre and gave receipts (compare that to KL and Bangkok) and I even had the owner of one restaurant to talk on the mobile to give directions to a friend I was meeting. Indeed when in Hangchow I received nothing but warm waves and smiles, and when I was on flying eagle peak several families asked to have their photo taken with me. It seemed as though having their photo taken with a passing Lau Wai was the height of their holiday. I felt like a pop star for a few glorious minutes. But of course fame will not change me..

One interesting aspect of Chinese tourist attractions such as those Hangchow has to offer is that everything in China is rebuilt, nothing is really old (outside of the mega-famous sites in the forbidden city and great wall up North). Structures that we now see are modelled on the old ones but the originals were all knocked over. If they were not destroyed in the constant external and internal wars then they were finally got at in the Cultural Revolution. It gives one the vague sensation that everything is new in the most ancient of lands, one of many paradoxes that make China so intriguing. However it did pain me as an historian to think of how much has been lost. I just hope they can preserve something now things appear to be stable.

I digress the delights of Hangchow were many and I felt sad to leave it for Soochow (Suzhou) the next day. Soochow is famous for pretty gardens and pretty girls, rather reminiscent of Barnsley, well perhaps not. Anyway I certainly saw plenty of beautiful gardens if not really that many gorgeous girls, or no more than usual. I believe they must all be working in Shanghai all ready. The gardens were certainly picturesque but I believe that to really appreciate them one needs a PhD in Chinese literature as each part of the garden in an allegory relating to a poem or piece of traditional folklore. Indeed the gardens are a living-breathing piece of poetry with every stone empowered with some meaning pregnant with symbolism to those who are sensitive to their resonance in Chinese history and myth. A meaning well and truly lost on this barbarian and so I would venture on all the Chinese visitors too. But that is the same in the west, Chartres is one large geometric puzzle insoluble to all of its myriad visitors bar the initiates. The gardens and the largest pagoda is Southern china took up my time in delightful Soochow and before I knew it I was back in Shanghai to explore the megalopolis a little further

I spent three more days roaming around the city. I must say I really loved Shanghai, even more than I thought I would have. The guidebooks had prepared me for the first talking about how much had been destroyed and so I was pleasantly surprised how much of the old Shanghai remained unmolested. The redevelopment/ruination of the city continues apace but large areas of the French concession still have the air of Paris that permeates the atmosphere of the sidestreets and boulevards. The old quarters remain in the shadow of the hideous high rises. I had a lively debate with a local friend about the old houses and how most locals wanted to move out into lovely new hellish high rises whereas Lau Wai's were buying the old discarded narrow homes. I of course was in love with the housing she could never contemplate anyone wanting to live in.

My first night back in Shanghai I took a boat trip on the river to take in the Bund from the water and to marvel at Pudong. The real marvel of Pudong was that a dozen years ago it was apparently marshland almost entirely under-developed. To gaze at it now and imagine nothing there is a leap of imagination similar to looking upon Manhattan and conjuring up the scene as it must have been when Trinity church was the only skyscraper. The difference of course that it took a hundred years for Trinity church to be engulfed but Pudong was swallowed up in a decade. The boat trip also highlighted the further development ideas that are being pursued in Shanghai with a whole new city for 21^st century living (parks, leisure centres the lot) planned further up the riverbank from the Bund; another massive project in the city that does not stop re-inventing itself. Sigh, whither London town in this new age? However the waterfront vista was all I cared to see of Pudong with everything interesting still in Puxi.

I made a point of spending a good day in the Shanghai museum, a must on any tourist itinerary. The museum is excellent (though I wish it had a bit more history and less art but that is just me). One sign interested me, the museum proudly proclaimed the museum revealed 'The greatness of our glorious Chinese civilisation'. Though in utter agreement with the statement I reflected that one would never find such a sign in the British museum. A sign lauding our glorious British civilisation would be just too politically sensitive and would sound jarring (I could imagine such a sign in France or the USA though). Whilst in the art section (the fine arts) I noticed that through the centuries the subject matter and style remained fairly similar (to my barbarian eye). Endless wall hangings depicting misty mountains and the pastoral idyll from 10^th to 19^th century, the style evolving but no wholesale overhaul of the system.

Is this indicative of Chinese history as a whole right up to the big bang in the 20^th century? European art just like European history can be dissected into epochs. Eras that are inter-dependent but which have distinctions and characteristics and had far reaching effects. We have the Middle Ages, renaissance, enlightenment, industrial revolution, expansion, empire. These currents of history are reflected in the major movements in European art as Europe continually re-invented itself. China, however, is famous for doing everything first and then it just stopped. A similarity with it has with the classical empires of European antiquity. One of the huge puzzles of history for me is the fact that the great thinkers of antiquity Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and others were so bloody clever and yet no one of that age thought of a steam engine or a spinning machine. All that incredible ancient brainpower devoted to theoretical mathematics; poetry and art but nothing devoted to practical applications, not even gunpowder despite all their constant warring. China in some ways was worse it had gunpowder and god knows how many inventions first. My Chinese friends have not claimed television or radio yet but I would not be surprised if they were widely available in the Middle Kingdom about 2,000 years ago. But they never caught on or were never applied on a grand scale. Remember everything in the West was invented (and discarded) in China two thousand years before, including shell suits, ford cortinas and the continent of North America. We should have had Chinese boats sailing into Portsmouth in the fourth century, instead it was the arriviste British barbarians that carved up Shanghai for themselves in the 1850s. In the museum I mused upon my personal observation is that in Chinese art one does not see great changes, no upheavals and seemingly no marked divide in epochs. Just as one dynasty followed another for 3/4000 years the art of the 19^th century appears a seamless progression from the art of the 10^th.

But I am probably quite wrong is saying all that, that was simply my superficial impression.

Back to those early questions, here is one that nagged at me. Is China communist? In terms of workers owning the means of production? no! Have workers in the history of humanity actually owned the means of production, in my opinion, no! Not even for a weekend, or an afternoon or even a tea beak whilst the capitalist lackeys had nipped out to the races. Yes Worker parties in history have owned the means of production but worker's parties and workers have the kind of relationship that the Liberal Democratic party of Japan has with liberalism and democracy. Certainly economically Shanghai is a capitalist leviathan dedicated to mammon. The money and wealth of the city is obvious and ubiquitous. The vestiges of communism remain in the state's large role in society for good and ill. China is constructed like some vast social democracy with some unpleasant trappings of its past. Certainly it would not be wise to raise banners declaring anti-government sentiment in the Renmin square in Shanghai, where the protests of June 1989 were put down four days after Tianemen. But I am told that in Taiwanese schools in China, KMT textbooks are available and used for the Taiwanese curriculum. The trend is for more freedom and people are happy to speak their minds if not write them down. Certainly young people do not seem oppressed by their government, indeed they are quite unconcerned with politics, which is not entirely a bad thing. People become more political when in a situation they desperately want to change and who in China wants this boom to change?

The food in Shanghai and the area was wonderful and the portions plentiful. In fact one never needs to eat rice in Shanghai as the liao will surely be enough to fill one up. I also loved the street food which I tried whilst wandering around the city. One need never actually sit at a restaurant as the food from the vendors does quite nicely and is irresistible when the aroma fills the back streets.

On my final day in Shanghai I took a trip up to the Doulon Street of famous cultural figures. Which is a raffish old street near Hongkou park dedicated to the memory of the important writers and social commentators at the turn of the 20^th century who were revered for their social conscience and founding the spirit of the revolution. The street is now lined with curio shops and teahouses, and I tried some Tibetan tea and yak's milk in one and a more orthodox brew in a cafe dedicated to pre-war cinema. Then yet more tea (but one can never really imbibe too much tea) in the peace hotel in the late afternoon, with just the faintest whiff of the good old decadent Shanghai remaining in the air. Alas the splendour of yore and its despicably divine louche esprit has departed Shanghai and soulless modernity in all its garish 21^st century rancid squalor permeates. But in the peace hotel after a few gin and tonics and if one squints and concentrates one can catch a glimpse of what Noel Coward, Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Eugene O'Neill and others revelled in as the twenties roared through the Paris of the East.

Just time to watch yet another Arsenal win in the evening and it was back to the airport early Sunday morning. Happily a journey free of incandescent motor vehicles strewn across the highway. I left China but I do not think China has left me. Zaijian.

P.S. There never was a sign in Hangphu park that said No dogs, No Chinese. That is a legend.