Warning: this section is not for the squeamish! - (we bet you all read it though!) We have deliberately kept this separate from our food section as we didn't want to spoil your virtual appetite during your tour.

The Chinese people in the Southern provinces are infamous for eating just about anything. We had a wander around the markets in Guangzhou to see for ourselves what the locals might be buying to eat that day. The first section sold dried food including caterpillars, sea horses, shelled turtles and bluebottles. This led into the Live Food Market where all sorts of animals were displayed in cages or tanks including cats, pigeons, thrushes, badgers, foxes, rabbits, turtles, snakes, giant toads, eels and beetles.

Chinese people, in general, like their food to be fresh which usually means still alive when they buy it. The victim is selected and often killed in front of the customer. We saw this being taken a step further with some fish which we watched being prepared, in advance, during a quiet period: first the flapping fish was whacked against the stall, the stunned fish was then scaled alive, its tail chopped off and its head almost removed. The fish was then filleted and the two fish steaks laid out on the stall with the head still hanging on by a thread. It was then that we noticed that its heart was actually still in place and was still visibly beating as evidence that the fish was still fresh.

Cycles are by far the most popular way for people to get around in China. There are supposed to be 8 million cycles in Beijing alone but we never saw them in the sort of density that you see in TV documentaries - or in Amsterdam for that matter. Nevertheless, they were still everywhere we went. All of the main roads in each of the cities we visited had wide cycle paths on each side and on many street corners there was someone set up to repair punctures. We even saw a tyre depot which had a wall of used cycle tyres. Cycles are so popular because they are cheap and cars and motorcycles are prohibitively expensive but even if you could afford one there are only a handful of licences issued each year which are auctioned to the highest bidder.

As we were leaving Nanjing, we were taken to a traditional Chinese medical practice where we were told about their alternative medicines before being allowed a free consultation. We had been told by our tour manager to take any diagnosis with a pinch of salt but a lot of people came away from their consultation convinced by it all and eager to purchase their prescribed remedy.

Out of curiosity, we both had a consultation. The examination consisted solely of looking at our tongue and feeling our pulse. Their diagnoses for us seemed to be just a guess at common, minor ailments which were only about 50% accurate. However, despite different apparent complaints, we were both prescribed the same remedy: an expensive tea based on a ginseng related root. It turned out that everybody else had also been prescribed the same remedy for their wildly differing ailments.

What makes this so called medical practice seem even more suspect was that we had all just eaten a meal that was going to bring over half of the group down with a serious stomach upset within a few hours. One woman was affected so badly that she had to be hospitalised overnight and yet these miracle “doctors” didn't detect this in any of us during our consultations.

©David Clark, Inc Population Control Poster, Beijing

In an effort to halt the country's unsustainable population growth, families are limited to one child with quite harsh financial penalties for exceeding this limit. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule with by far the biggest being the 80% of the population living in rural areas that are allowed 2 children (since they depend on them to continue their work on the farms). Also, China's population is 95% Han Chinese with the remainder being considered ethnic minorities usually distinguished by their language or religion rather than their looks (unless you include the distinctive clothes some of them wear!). To prevent these minority groups from shrinking even further, they are allowed to have as many children as they like. Finally, we asked our guide if families restricted to one child were penalised if they actually had twins and this is the final exception that we heard about: twins and other multiple births are allowed and are therefore considered to be a real blessing as they are the only way that many families can have more than one child.

Consequently, parents will spoil their child rotten. They are called: “Little Emperors” as their parents will do absolutely anything for them. This is being exploited by McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken (which sadly have branches everywhere). They advertise free gifts with their meals which the kids want and therefore get. Demand is so high for these that queuing for over an hour for a junk food meal is not uncommon.

While we were writing this, we were desperately trying to beat the deadline of when Hong Kong is returned to China. We were in China when there was still a few months to go before the handover but, even then, there was a tremendous build-up to the ceremony going on. In Tiananmen Square there was a big digital clock which was counting down both the days and the seconds to when the colony was going to be returned to China. We were in China when there was exactly 100 days to go and celebrations were reported on the news. There was obvious plans for the biggest parties of all throughout China to take place on July 1st, 1997 on the handover.

During our few precious hours in Hong Kong at the end of the tour we didn't really pick up any mass panic going on in the final days of British colonial rule. What we did notice was their never-ending quest to make money being applied to the event. Everywhere we went people are selling “Hong Kong 1997” souvenirs: all of the T-shirts had “1997” somewhere on them and we even saw a watch for sale that just counted backwards to the time of the handover!

We noticed that prices were about double what they were when we were last there (late ‘94). Our escort said that this was because many people were worried that China will tax people with savings so they are either madly spending their money (forcing inflation up) or hiding it either under the bed or in foreign banks. We still managed to find plenty of bargains though.

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