The ground roars and trembles, tipping the surging crowd down the narrow escalators. The train to Guangzhou rumbles into Hong Kong station. We obstinately hold our ground and move steadily towards our cabin. The uniformed woman gestures irritably. ‘Upstairs’, she says. I, personally, am anything but irritable. Upstairs. And facing forward. We’ve expressly requested that we face in the direction the train is going so China won’t go backwards. We sit down victorious and look ac

We tumble into room 2817 at the Intercontinental Foshan with dreams of room service and maybe even a bit of TV. We flop on the bed all easy going and delighted to have escaped the collective mayhem in the buffet dining room downstairs. I dial room service. Two ‘roast half chicken’ and one glass of white wine, please. Michel has a Tsingtao beer out the room fridge. You have no sauvignon blanc? The chardonnay is fine. Thank you. Missus Walter, you want one half chicken and one

I seldom venture from the posh Parklane Hotel here in Dongguan. It’s grand enough to take it personally. The surrounding avenues and architecture are monumental, a person could get lost crossing the road. So I am reluctant, you understand. And I normally arrive late on a muggy southern China night and leave early the next morning so there has been no need. Today is different. They will pick me up in the smart car tomorrow. I arrived last night. That’s a whole day. The size an

Well, what can you do with an island? It just floats there, wantonly untethered. It’s possible it doesn’t even need you, that’s how unequal the relationship is. If it shrugged, you’d fall in the sea. But, with a small one, like Cheung Chau, there are edges everywhere and you can walk right around and tickle them with your bare feet. In the end you’ll be back where you started and that’s not easy on one of those continent things. And Hong Kong’s deadly crowded. There are peopl

I go there now regularly. Every time I am in China I look forward to it but it wasn’t always like that. The first time I took my shoes off and rolled my jeans up to my knees I wasn’t sure I could let myself enjoy it. A Chinese foot massage. You’ve heard of them, right? A friend of mine who blithely goes where angels fear to tread, casually asked my traveling businessman husband: “So do you get the happy ending then?” I wanted to close my hands over my ears. Out in the open th

There’s something untamed and off kilter about the rickshaws that fly around Beijing. There are humans driving the things, but they seem abstractions; preternatural, answerable to no-one and quite above the banalities of control. No eyes blinkered -- forward looking -- focused. No white knuckles. No fear, absolutely no attachment to minutiae, like survival, even in the face of some of the most deadly traffic in the world. I don’t know, I just think I’d rather walk. Doesn’t m