CHINA

China was  .....what? A fascinating insight into a culture that goes back continuously for more than 2,000 years or a nightmare vision of an urban future dominated by megacities? Well, a bit of both really.

To take the first. The school we were exchanging with, Shi Shi High School, is the oldest recorded school in the world, with documents dating back to its founding in 143BC. While there, we visited the Dujiangyan irrigation system, which is also 2,000 years old (though the stones wrapped in bamboo that made up the original dam have been replaced by concrete). As is the Wuhou memorial temple in the middle of the city. The Sichuan plain has always been a fertile region (Sichuan means four rivers), so Chengdu has always been an important city. Bits and pieces testifying to that history pop up all over the place.

However, it is also a modern city of some 14 million people, up from 500,000 as recently as the 1950's. 20-30 story tower blocks litter the ground in the same way that 1-storey housing estates would in Europe or America. The traffic is terrible, even though all commercial vehicles are banned during the day (so all deliveries take place at night). Everything is go, go, go, and it was a lot richer than I had expected. BMW and Mercedes seem to be doing a roaring trade.

Walter Blotscher