In the morning I awoke early and thankfully only endured a short awkward silence with my bedfellow before Ali arrived to take me to breakfast. I left my bag in the room with the only man I’ve ever slept with without knowing his name and headed down to a local café. I figured if the guy had any intention of robbing me he’d have done it by now. I left it to Ali to order and wolfed down some tasty noodles in a beef broth. In the excitement of the night before I’d failed to eat anything after lunch and the nourishment was badly needed. After we headed across the road to a hotel adjoining the train station and I was introduced to Ali’s mother, a kindly middle-aged woman who obviously had a business brain, being the head of the sauce empire. At no stage was Ali’s father mentioned, I felt it would have been a bit rude to pry. After a stilted conversation with Ali translating, some Champion’s League highlights miraculously appeared on the TV and we were free to discuss whether Mourinho would be a success at Inter and who would be the Champions of Europe this year. As fun as it was I had a date with the Chairman so after exchanging contact details and a fond farewell I retrieved my bag and headed for the bus station. Ali left me with a promise to improve his English enough so he could one day travel to England and watch a Sunderland-Chelsea match together. I just hope we’re still in the same division if he ever makes it over!

Almost inevitably the initial bus station I headed to was the wrong one (despite Lonely Planet’s claims to the contrary) and I needed another taxi ride to take me down to the South Bus Station. I boarded a small local bus to Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao Zedung, and once it had filled we were off. The road out was surprisingly potholed but eventually we pulled into a ramshackle car park area which passed as a bus station and I was bundled onto a second bus for the sightseeing tour. I obviously look confused enough as a friendly Chinese tourist piped up that she knew English and would help me on the way round.

Our first stop was the Museum of Mao’s life. Inside was a sterile, old-fashioned set of displays with many photographs of the big guy with a plethora of other world leaders and the occasional picture of him relaxing. He had three wives in his life but precious little is written about them or any of his offspring, save for a son of his that died young, the cause was not disclosed. All the displays were in Chinese and it is only through my new friend ‘Yanrongjia’ that I had any idea what they were about. The most exciting thing I can convey is that since the famous picture of Mao (well, famous in China anyway) with his arm round two children attending his former school, they have apparently wed. My spidey senses told me to take this with a pinch of salt!

We toured through his former school (bizarrely no photos of his classroom allowed) and onto his familial abode. This constituted the most disappointing part of the tour for me. The entire house has been rebuilt from the foundations up. With the vigour of a country that firmly believes new is best they decided the old place looked too shabby and pulled it down. The impression is left that Mao grew up in a 90’s condo and lived very comfortably indeed through his youth. Here are the only English signs in the village, assuring us that Mao lectured his parents and siblings on socialist doctrine every night over dinner throughout his childhood. It must’ve been fun parenting a child who supposedly believed in permanent revolution from an early age!

To be honest the whole Shaoshan experience was a disappointment. Considering how important Mao is to the forming of modern China the information was sparse and the day for the most part bored me. For someone with such a huge cult of personality while alive, so little is really known of his background. What little information there was contained such blatant propaganda that it was useless to anyone. Thankfully, my day was to improve from then on.

On arriving back in Changsha my plan was to jump straight on a bus South and spend the night on the move. During the day however, I'd been chatting away to Yanrongjia and she invited me out for a meal with her and her friends. For me the chance to dine with a group of Chinese people was far too interesting to pass up and I decided to bank on my companion's assurances that she and her friends would be able to find me accommodation. We headed back to the hotel where she was meeting her friends and I dropped my bag at the front desk. We walked up to a plush private room where I was introduced to 9 others (please forgive me for not remembering names!) and immediately toasted with a round of shots of Maotai, a rather sour tasting Chinese spirit. I was well and truly the centre of attention and the next half hour consisted of new foods being pushed at me and each of the men at the table taking turns to propose a toast to me. Mercifully after a half hour the girls intervened and suggested a drop in the pace (this was all my interpretation, very little English was being spoken!) and the meal became rather more civilised. The food was delicious, a mixture of spicy fish and tofu, pickled vegetables, and all manner of meat dishes. I was in absolute heaven, eating a genuine Chinese banquet with genuine Chinese people, no tourist traps here. Then a strange thing happened. The mood of the table became suddenly serious and everyone except two members of the group became quiet. I waited for a pause in the discussion to quietly ask Yanrongjia what had happened. She cheerfully told me that the business had begun. Over the next half hour I discovered that all my fellow diners worked for the Kweichow Moutai Company (which explained why they were unconcerned about the rate at which we were getting through bottles) and were having a banquet to confirm the planning of a new factory. So there I was, sat in the middle of a business meeting in my shorts and t-shirt covered in the grime of a day of sight-seeing in 30 degree heat. To say I felt out of place would be rather an understatement.

Thankfully the mood lightened and a slightly tubby cheerful guy in the group started to tell me 'I love you.....but I no gay' with an incredibly camp waggle of his finger. As the meeting broke up I was invited to join them as they headed on for a KTV session. I was taken to the hotel that had been booked for me (that was way above my usual budget but beggars can't be choosers!) and hastily changed into jeans and a fresh t-shirt and headed out on the town with my new friends. Once at the bar I was introduced to the Chinese tradition of KTV. You book yourself and your friends a private room and sit in it with a big screen, singing Karaoke with waiting staff on hand to bring beer and fruit platters, which they did in copious quantities. Sadly, the aim of getting me there for KTV was revealed early, they wanted to hear me sing English songs. Anyone who has had the misfortune to hear me sing before knows that's not one of my strengths but I was enthusiastically cheered on by my small Chinese audience and happily murdered the Beatles, Queen and Abba amongst others. As the night drew to an end my chubby friend wrote out a sheet of paper 'One World, One Dream', the Olympic motto, in a fittingly drunken tribute to our new friendship. I retired to bed in my luxurious hotel and reflected on an extremely unexpected couple of days.