I have to admit here that my view of Guangzhou is slightly biased by the way in which I visited it. Anyone can go to the major tourist areas, I figured, and see all the shiny new shopping malls and pristine parkland - but I wanted to see the real China, the China where normal people live and work and where the people's republic can't hide behind the glitz. For this reason, I don't think I'd be making too wild a guess if I said that this book will probably never ...

Let me say at this point that I'm not even going to try to understand Chinese money. For a start, despite the fact that Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world (Spanish is second and English is third in case you wondered) and there are probably more Chinese people around than anyone could imagine, their currency remains a great mystery to everyone in the west. Most people I ask believe it to be the Yen, which of course is the currency of Japan. In...

Before I left Hong Kong for mainland China - a strange choice of wording considering much of Hong Kong is already on the mainland - I wanted to visit the Hong Kong Zoo. I had already tried to do so earlier in the week, but had followed the directions I had been given carefully and arrived instead at the island park and spent much of the morning exploring the large undercover aviary, assuming it to be part of the zoo. In fact, I should've continued further up the ...

Finally, I don't think I can possibly justify any chapter on Macau without mentioning its vibrant nightlife - after all, this is what brings many people to the region in the first place. Macau has changed quite considerably since the handover to the Chinese, and nowhere is this more obvious than on the Macau peninsula, with its sudden proliferation of new multi-million dollar Casinos, and at no other time can you see the new Macau in all its glory than after dark...

When I visited Macau in 1997, before the handover to the Chinese, the islands were far quieter and more traditional in style. After crossing over to Taipa on one of the three huge metal bridges which connect it to the Macau peninsula, an experience probably quite similar to crossing the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, my Taxi drove for what seemed like an age through small towns and villages which didn't seem to be able to make up their mind whether they wer...