I walked the entire length of the Great Wall of China at the weekend. My feet did hurt a bit by the time I finished, but I still managed to have a quick look around the Temple of Confucious before going back to the hotel.
Prior to that I had toured 80 Chinese villages, and been hey! hello! missy-d in all of them, with the tempting offers of fans and personal name stamps. Shenzhen has absolutely no indigenous culture, but it has a splendid theme park with the appropriate name of Splendid China, which is half mock-up houses, containing either authentic furniture or tat stalls; and half miniature chinese landmarks. The miniature chinese landmarks are somewhat marred by the tower blocks of Shenzhen rising behind them; if only I could show you the photos.
Also, the bushes were singing, which was a little odd. There were speakers hidden in every shrub, piping chinese music to the sightseers. If it hadn’t been getting on for 35 degrees, we would all have been skipping and dancing down the paths. Even with my little pretty parasol, it was damn hot. Parasols are a damn good invention, though.

The only thing for Westerners to do here on a Saturday is shop, so that’s what I did. I couldn’t have managed it without my local guide, a Taiwanese girl who lives here and speaks fluent Mandarin. We had been out the night before to a Teriyaki restaurant, and both had sore heads on Saturday morning; she swore the best thing for it was more Japanese food, so that’s what we did first.
Then she made a telephone call to the Secret Apartment, where she takes all visiting colleagues from the UK and America, to buy handbags and watches with dubious designer labels…

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We get a daily food allowance of $20 when travelling in China, which makes RMB185. RMB stands for The People’s Currency, in case you’re interested. If I ate RMB185 worth of food every day, I would have to pay an excess baggage charge on the flight home.

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I am now in the city of Shenzhen, as you will know if you have been paying attention. Shenzhen is in the south-east corner of China, right on the border with Hong Kong. To get here, you take a local train for about half an hour, and then walk through the HK border, across 100 metres of no man’s land, and then queue for ten minutes in the wrong queue, before being sent back to complete an Arrival form. You then spend some time wandering around in the brightly-lit dark looking for a taxi stand, and eventually find it underground.

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Alone in Hong Kong, I found myself in the Hung King Kok Restaurant. I’m not kidding, that really was its name. It was a diner-style, with orange plastic banquettes and staff who found me amusingly novel. I had the best chicken with fried rice that I have ever tasted.
Alone in Shenzhen where everything seemed dark and terrifying when I arrived late last night, I tried the same dish in the hotel restaurant, and while it was superior to the UK equivalent, it wasn’t nearly as exciting.
This lunchtime I was taken out by my colleagues, and fed on spicy chicken with bamboo shoots and peanuts [bamboo shoots that LOOK like bamboo]; green chillies with beef; home-made tofu in a garlic sauce [I have never liked tofu before – this was different]; shredded fried potato; tea with flowers in it, and gold and silver buns. I am garlicky and sleepy this afternoon, but at least I am well-fed.
Tomorrow I get to find out exactly how sweaty a sweatshop is.