Back in China, 34 years after a day trip

I first dropped into China in 1983.

I say “dropped” because that’s what it felt like.

Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport was a treacherous place to land. On approach, our plane plunged into a dramatic descent — which would have been the scariest thing if we hadn’t then made a lowlevel approach with buildings towering on either side of the plane.

I like my foreign places to be foreign but at first this looked like it could be a city anywhere.

However, I came round to thinking it might be the most foreign place I’d ever been. Every sign was in Chinese, making this the first place I’d ever been where I couldn’t at least guess what went on in a particular building.

Off the beaten track there was a street whose shops sold coffins — a challenge to my holiday mood.

Hong Kong was famed for selling cut-price camera equipment and I wanted a Nikon SLR.

Unfortunately, the place also had a reputation for fake goods. I got my bargain camera. It lasted me 25 years, but I always had a nagging feeling it might not be genuine.

I booked a day trip to the Chinese mainland and Macao. In those days, of course, Hong Kong was British and China was a mysterious closed-off world.

At the border, soldiers eyed our coach party with suspicion. But after receiving a nice stamp in our passports we were waved through into another world.

And it really was another world. After the high-rise congestion of Hong Kong, here we were on a narrow, road, empty apart from the odd cyclist, fields on either side. It was beautiful.

We arrived in Cuiheng. We toured Sun Yat-sen’s house and were then served a banquet, one of the best meals I’ve ever had — a huge revolving table full of different tastes, washed down with large bottles of beer.

And now, all these years later, here I am in Beijing.

How have things changed? I haven’t been back to the area I first visited but Beijing is certainly a 21st century city, with its high-rises and frighteningly busy roads.

It’s sad that things have had to change because in many ways Beijing is now a city like many others. But who am I to say prosperity should be denied to a country in order to keep it quaint for the tourist?

I’ve had a few welcome doses of culture shock. A regular one, oddly enough, is my local supermarket, with its strange sounds and smells and puzzling products. The shouting stallholders hawking their wares seem particularly odd to a Brit.

Then there’s the Lama Temple, swathed in clouds of incense and with a wonderful atmosphere. The charming hutong, with their bohemian shops and cafes, are another treat.

I love the subway, where you’re obliged to get up close and personal with a few thousand strangers — the closest I’ve been to someone without at least being engaged to them.

So China is still very much Chinese but, in 2016, a whole different kettle of (live) fish.