The first thing you will notice upon arrival in China is that no one speaks English. Not the people walking down the street, not the cashier in McDonalds, and not even the majority of the staff at the 5-star previously Communist Party-run Beijing Hotel.

Despite this, the Chinese are generally a friendly bunch. With a few exceptions. Namely the street scammers my mum bought a tea set off, receiving her change in Kazakhstani money.

On the first day we lounged about in our room in the Beijing Hotel. As I lay in bed, I played with the thought of Communist leader Mao Zedong staying in that very room. Perhaps buttoning up his jacket and straightening his Red Army hat.

In the evening we strolled down to the local restaurant/bar, the name of which I have forgotten now. There we ate from a set menu of various meat dishes while watching a live performance of amateur songs and dances by the pubgoers themselves! After watching these two getting up and dancing on the table, my stereotypical view of Chinese people being mini-Confucius’s with long, grey beards was shattered forever:

We awoke early the next day to catch the bus to a jade factory just outside Beijing. Vases, jewellery, ships, carriages, and lions were all on display gleaming shades of green (and even the odd few of purple and beige).

If the Chinese had a national stone it would be jade. Throughout the many dynasties, the ornamental stone, with its emerald-green shimmer, was used to create decorative objects and even entire burial suits were made of jade.

We passed through a corridor with large glass windows on each side. Peering through, we watched men in white coats drilling carefully into unfinished jade articles. One such article was a mix of a ball and a Russian doll. It had the shape of a football with many holes. And inside each ball there was another one.

After leaving, our wallets considerably lighter, the next attraction was the Great Wall of China. This awe-inspiring dragon of a structure snakes over grassy and rocky mountains for a distance of 6,352 kilometres roughly forming the boundary between North China and Mongolia.

You may find this hard to believe, but my family and I were the only Western people on the wall. The droves of Chinese that milled about seemed to be more enthusiastic about their culture than the foreigners. Because of this, I held a sort of celebrity status that day. Chinese boys and girls (and even their parents!) lined up to have their picture taken with me and I was only too happy to oblige.

We visited other sites in and around Beijing such as the Ming Tombs, Tiananmen Square, and the Summer Palace, but my most memorable time was the walk through the Forbidden City with a really funny Chinese student called ‘Sword’ who acted as our guide. If I remember correctly, it took at least 3 hours (probably 4) to cross from one side of the complex to the other. Sword certainly earned his fee by going into detail about the life of the Emperors and the customs and complexities of the Forbidden City. When our tour came to an end, he presented us with his card, and repeated in his Chinese accent, ‘Remember! My e-mail is sword_is_sharp@hotmail.com!’

I happened to be passing by the Worker’s Stadium in Beijing that day a few hours before the final match of the AFC Asian Cup 2004. It was China vs Japan. A big crowd - of mostly Chinese supporters - was building up outside the stadium. Chinese flags were flying everywhere, people dressed up in communist military outfits, the sponsors’ stands sold memorabilia. I bought a shirt and went over to a group that were getting totally whammed. One of them was already slurring his speech and rambling on about his disapproval of the USA in Chinese. ‘China! China!’ he chanted. ‘China good!’ my dad humoured him. Then he said, ‘U… S… A,’ and shook his head in disagreement, later giving his thumbs up to Saddam Hussein. See the video clip at the end of this article.

(the Chinese later lost 3-1 to Japan)

A visit to the marketplace is bound to liven your senses (and you’ll need every one of them to dodge the persistent stall owners trying to shove everything from seahorse and eels on a stick to cooked sparrow down your throat). It is abuzz with activity and grinning faces shout amicably to each other as they fry a few live scorpions for their next customers.

I took a seat outside a quiet, respectable looking restaurant and accepted the menu from the owner. A sea of wavy, incomprehensible characters filled the pages. Then I realised - I can’t read Chinese. ‘Do you have any chicken?’ I asked. ‘Chick-an… ah… uh… sorry, sir?’ he looked puzzled. ‘Er… chicken to eat?’ I made a gesture with my combined fingers near my mouth to depict the action. He looked even more bewildered than before. ‘Meat?’ I tried. ‘Ah! Yes, yes!’ and he scurried off to the kitchen. A few minutes and I was chewing on a skewer of some tasteless pieces of what looked like chicken. I later found out it was dog.

After that awful experience, we had our last dinner at a classy Peking Duck restaurant. A figure that looked like the chef himself came barging through the kitchen doors with a trolley bearing the roast duck in his hands. He did this with such haste that he was at our table in seconds sharpening his large cleaver against another. Then he attacked it! The poor duck survived less than a minute before it lay in carefully cut slices on our plates. It took us even less time to pack it into our ‘mu-shi’ flour pancakes, apply the plum sauce and spring onion, and gobble it down.

‘One more duck!’ my dad called to the waiter, waving. The restaurant went silent and I could feel the stares of many a Chinese person bearing down on us. I could probably guess what words were going through their head: ‘What a bunch of greedy bastards!’

We retired to the Beijing Hotel that night, our stomachs bloated from good food (and the dog). Tomorrow we would leave to Australia.

But that is a story for another time and another article. ;)

Movie clips:

• Drunk!