Following is an excerpt. The book is not just walking directions; it’s very visual, with lots of photographs — some modern and some historical — and colour maps for each walk. I’ve included a few random spreads among the text below; click them to view at full size. Happy hiking!

Route 12: Pok Fu Lam

The green western slopes of Hong Kong Island have long been used as a retreat from the city – first by missionaries and dairy farmers, and today by students and wealthier residents. Starting at the Peak and ending atop Mount Davis, this walk will exercise your knees and give you advance views of the heritage sites along the way.

Victoria Gap, where the Peak Tower stands, is a crossroads from which trails lead in half a dozen directions. The entrance to Pok Fu Lam Country Park is easily found directly opposite the bus station, and a car-free road leads straight down into peaceful forest. Old banyans clinging to the stone walls shade your descent into the valley.

These steep hillsides were saved from development by the need to protect Hong Kong’s water sources. This valley was dammed as early as 1863 and a reservoir – the colony’s first – was built down below to supply water to the city. An aqueduct ran around from Pok Fu Lam to Central, giving Conduit Road its name. Major tree planting took place at the same time to prevent soil erosion. Before then, most of Hong Kong Island’s uplands were bare, partly thanks to the grass cutters who scoured the hills to collect kindling. The forest suffered during the war years, when much of it was chopped down for firewood; but it has recovered well and you’re now able to walk through mature woodland.

Camellia and eagle’s claw flowers provide colour beside the path, and birdsong fills the air. In fact, it was the ‘pok fu’ bird which gave Pok Fu Lam its name – lam meaning ‘forest’ – although the original Chinese characters have changed. It’s often pronounced ‘Pock Fulham’ by expats more familiar with the London football club.

At the only fork in the road, turn right to carry on downhill, passing some bricked-up bunkers built by the British Army. The path now skirts the reservoir. Beside the dam, there’s an attractive old building now used by the country parks staff, and facing it an information board with old photos of the area. One picture shows a strange white castle which seems very out of place on the bare hillside. In fact this building is still there: now known as University Hall, it’s hidden from view by trees. As you pass the riding school on your left, the mansion stands above the other side of the road. You can go up the steps and through the low gateway for a closer look.

Douglas Castle, as it was originally called, was built in the 1860s by Scottish taipan Douglas Lapraik to serve as his country home. It looked rather different then: an octagonal penthouse surrounded by battlements commanded all-round sea views, four crenellated corner towers had mock arrow slits, and outhouses were built in identical Victorian Gothic style. The building has undergone many changes over the years and is now used as halls of residence for Hong Kong University students.

Lapraik arrived on the China coast as a young man, travelling to Macau in 1839 to become apprentice to an English watchmaker. Upon the founding of Hong Kong a few years later, he moved to the new colony and quickly became successful in the property and shipping trades. He built a dock at Aberdeen to service Royal Navy vessels, ran a line of steamships up the coast to Amoy and Foochow (modern Xiamen and Fuzhou) and helped establish the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce. He was one of the investors in the Chinese junk Keying which made history by sailing to London and New York in 1846 – the boat amazed the crowds there, including Queen Victoria, who had never seen such a thing before. Perhaps his most notable legacy was the founding in 1863 of the Hongkong & Whampoa Dock Company. This was the first limited company in Hong Kong – prompting the government to start writing a Companies Ordinance – and its ultimate successor, Cheung Kong, still bears stock code 0001 at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Douglas Steamship Company remained in existence until the 1980s.

After an outstanding career, Lapraik retired to Britain, and Douglas Castle was sold to the French Mission in 1894. The priests renamed it Nazareth House, added a chapel, and installed a printing press which produced religious texts in dozens of Asian languages. A prominent feature added at this time was the cast-iron spiral staircase which connects three floors. In 1954 the building passed into its current ownership; the chapel was converted into a dining hall and the crypt into a common room, and as University Hall it continues to house undergraduate students. Despite the building’s change of name, alumni are known as Castlers.

Béthanie stands on the other side of Pok Fu Lam Road. Built in 1873 by the same French Mission, it was designed as a peaceful retreat and sanatorium for priests returning from missionary work in China and elsewhere in the Far East. The Missions Etrangères de Paris departed in the 1970s, and for many years the building deteriorated while being used as a storehouse by Hong Kong University Press. Since 2003 it has been occupied by the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, who have renovated it in innovative style: in particular, the original pitched roof, which was removed at some point in the past, has been reinstated using glass panels instead of tiles. The project won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award in 2008.

There’s a French Mission museum in the former wine cellar which is open every day until 6:00pm, and guided tours of the building are also conducted. The Bauhinia blakeana, Hong Kong’s official floral emblem, was discovered growing in the gardens of Béthanie by French priests in the 1880s.

On the far side of the building, two octagonal cowsheds have survived from the earliest days of Hong Kong’s milk industry – they gave rise to the company which became Dairy Farm. It was a Scottish pioneer of tropical medicine, Dr Patrick Manson, who came up with the idea of establishing a farm to supply hygienic fresh milk to the European population of Hong Kong. Eighty cows were imported and the Dairy Farm company began operations in 1886. The company later diversified into running supermarkets, in a joint venture with the Lane Crawford department store, until it bought the Wellcome retail chain and became part of the Jardines group.

The Pok Fu Lam farm was closed in 1983, and the two cattle sheds have now been converted into a performance space – one as a tiny theatre and the other as a foyer, which also has a small photo exhibition of the site’s history. Down the hill from these, another of the old Dairy Farm buildings is now used by the Chinese Cuisine Training Institute.

Across the road, Pok Fu Lam Village may look like a shanty town but it is in fact one of the few indigenous settlements remaining on Hong Kong Island. A lot of villagers were formerly employed on the dairy farm. Today, some of them grow crops on land which must be worth billions. Besides a large earth god shrine, the village has an unusual brick tower called the Lee Ling Immortal Pagoda which dates from about 1910.

Take a bus now a few stops north, passing the Queen Mary Hospital, to alight at the Chinese Christian Cemetery. The site has excellent fung shui, with wooded hills behind it and an unencumbered view out to sea. A stairway leads straight down through the terraces to the Pavilion of Eternity – ‘Erected by Wing Lock Tong, May 1951’ – and then to Victoria Road. Bear right and then take the steps down into a ramshackle stonemasons’ village. At the foot of the hill you’ll find the gates to the Tung Wah Coffin Home, a complex of buildings reminiscent of old Macau.

From the late 19th century onwards, tens of thousands of mainland Chinese people passed through Hong Kong on their way to Southeast Asia, North America, Australia and other places where fortunes in tin, gold or plain labour could be made. When they died, their wish was to be buried in their ancestral lands, and so their bodies were sent back the way they came. There was a need for temporary storage of their remains until transport could be found back to China, particularly in times of strife on the mainland, and so the trustees of the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road founded the first coffin home in Kennedy Town in 1875. This was moved to the present site in 1899, and the Tung Wah Hospital took over its management. It is still in use; good burial plots can be hard to find in crowded Hong Kong, and caskets and urns can be kept here until one becomes available.

The site was nicely restored in 2004, winning praise from the Hong Kong Heritage Awards, but it’s private and you may not be allowed into the compound.

Further west along Victoria Road, Felix Villas is an elegant terrace of houses built in the 1920s and now used as quarters for university staff. Beyond it, a foundation stone for Victoria Road is set into its junction with Mount Davis Road. This was laid in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s 60th year on the throne; construction of the road commenced at the same time and was named in her honour. It was moved to its present site in 1977, coincidentally also a royal jubilee year, and a plate notes this fact.

On the coastal side of the road further on from here, a compound of white buildings behind a high wall has no sign, nor any official name on maps; not even a street number. Since the handover in 1997, it has been slowly crumbling into the surrounding greenery. Originally the mess of the Royal Engineers, the compound was transferred to the police force in the 1950s for use as a secret prison for Taiwanese spies – the colonial government was keen to avoid Hong Kong being used as a proxy battleground for Chinese Nationalist and Communist forces, and Special Branch detained anyone suspected of engaging in espionage.

But it was in 1967 that things really heated up. That summer, Hong Kong was rocked by riots inspired by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution over the border. Home-made bombs were planted in the streets. Leftists called strikes which paralysed public transport. Unionist demonstrators clashed with police, pro-Beijing crowds waving Mao’s red book picketed Government House, and a radio journalist who opposed the violence was murdered. At the border town of Sha Tau Kok, Chinese militia shot and killed a group of Hong Kong police officers. Fearing a possible invasion, the government decided to take radical action: pro-communist schools and newspapers were closed down, and the police were granted special powers to arrest leftist leaders. This involved the world’s first helicopter raids on multi-storey buildings. The political prisoners were brought to Pok Fu Lam and held in solitary confinement until the disturbances were over.

This hard-line response was generally supported by the Hong Kong public – the leftists’ violence having turned public opinion against them – and in appreciation of its steadfastness, the Hong Kong Police Force was later given the prefix ‘Royal’, which it kept until 1997. In Macau, by contrast, the Portuguese authorities failed to maintain order during the unrest, and control of the enclave was effectively handed over to China thirty years early.

The ‘white house’ compound may last have been used in 1989, when democratic activists smuggled away from the massacre in Tiananmen Square were debriefed here before being sent abroad. The Beijing crackdown prompted Hong Kong people of all political stripes to assist an emergency ‘underground railroad’ operation. Led by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which still organizes the annual commemoration in Victoria Park, Operation Yellow Bird helped hundreds of students and intellectuals escape from the mainland. One such person involved was Lo Hoi-sing; formerly Hong Kong’s top man in China as head of the Trade Development Council’s Beijing office, his involvement in the rescue missions landed him in a mainland jail, and his career never recovered. Most of the details of the risky operation remain a secret.

Special Branch was disbanded as 1997 approached – some local detectives were given British passports to protect them from any post-handover retaliation – and the buildings have been empty since then.

The final stretch of this route involves a hike up quiet Mount Davis Path. A flight of 365 steps leads up to an isolated youth hostel, from which backpackers can enjoy 270-degree views of Victoria Harbour. To save their legs, a shuttle bus service links it to Sheung Wan.

Past the hostel, and up a steep slope built to haul giant 9.2-inch guns to the summit of this coastal peak, you’ll find the ruins of an extensive system of fortifications. Mount Davis is well positioned to guard the western approaches to the harbour, and five gun emplacements were built here in the early years of the 20th century to ward off potential French or Russian fleets. More cannons were installed at Jubilee Battery, at the foot of the peak. They were of little use against a land-based army, however, so were unable to defend Hong Kong during the Japanese invasion from the mainland in 1941. They came under heavy aircraft attack during the assault – and the damage can still be seen – but the last defenders held out right until the surrender on Christmas Day.

As well as exploring the bunkers, tunnels and command posts, you can end your walk the same way it was started: with panoramic views of sea and islands.

The post Book excerpt: The Heritage Hiker’s Guide to Hong Kong appeared first on Pete Spurrier.

Todd Crowell’s guidebook Explore Macau describes eight routes around the urban peninsula and its outlying islands, sufficient to explore and understand this fascinating old city and its unique blend of European and Asian architecture, cuisine and cultures. Here is an excerpt of one of Todd’s guided walks. Click the map to see at larger size.

Walk No. 3: From Lilau Square to Barra Point

Route: Down Rua George Chinnery to Lilau Square, continuing on down Calçada da Barra to the A-Ma Temple, then around Barra Point to Avenida da Praia Grande.

Chief Points of Interest: Lilau Square, Mandarin House, Moorish Barracks, A-Ma Temple, Macau Maritime Museum, Penha Hill, Santa Sancha Palace and the former Bela Vista Hotel.

The name Rua George Chinnery (1) just behind St. Lawrence’s Church enshrines the memory of the 19th-century British artist who lived near here and whose ink drawings and paintings form the main impressions of Macau as it must have looked more than 100 years ago. The artist actually rented rooms (now gone) on the neighboring Rua Ignacio Baptista, which was close to some of his favorite subjects: St. Lawrence’s Church and the Chapel of St. Joseph Seminary. Of course to see Chinnery’s most famous scenery one needs to go down to the Praia Grande although you will have to use your imagination to screen out the reclamation. To plunge into this neighborhood is a little like stepping back into old Macau, a town of narrow streets, hidden nooks and patios and the sounds of hawkers.

Stroll down this short street to the end and turn left. On one side is the Patio da Ilusao, or Illusion Courtyard, hidden behind a typical Portuguese gateway. Cut through Rua Alleluia to Lilau Square (2), the quiet heart of the old Macanese community, built around a fountain. This neighborhood shows the results of considerable attention by the cultural affairs department. The late 19th-century residences on all sides of the small square have been restored in bright pinks, greens and yellows and decorated with black gas lanterns. It is worth pausing for a coffee or cold drink from a kiosk in the square under the shade of a huge banyan tree. The fountain that originally stood in the square was dismantled in the 1940s. The government has reconstructed a replacement water fountain in one end of the square, a large square granite block, which seems incongruously modern in the setting. An old folk poem recalls:

Who drinks the waters of Lilau
Will never forget Macau
He either marries here in Macau
Or else returns to Macau

Just behind the square, down Travessa Antonio Silva, is a building which once represented the height of Chinese residential architecture in Macau. It is based on the design of the home of a senior official of Imperial China, hence the name Mandarin House (3). The sprawling complex with nine apartments was built in 1881 by Zheng Guan Ying (1842-1922), a notable official and writer (Sun Yat-sen is said to have admired his critique of bureaucratic decay, The Jeopardy of Civilization, written in the Mandarin House). It has been all but abandoned since a fire in 1994, leaving only a few stray cats as permanent residents. Every time I have visited the house in the past, it has been derelict, technically private property, although there was never anybody to stop me from walking in and wandering around. Evidently the details of ownership have been resolved in order to allow the Macau government to take over the property and begin an extensive renovation program aimed at restoring the house to its original condition. This should make it one of the most splendid cultural artifacts in the enclave.

Continue along Calçada da Barra and you will soon come to the Moorish Barracks (4), a beautiful public building which, with its Arabian arches, shows the influences of the Indian subcontinent. The ‘Moors’ were actually Indians from Goa who were brought to Macau to augment the local police and defense forces. It was for these soldiers that the Moorish Barracks were built in 1874. It is now the headquarters for the marine police and is not open to the public; but stroll along the beautiful veranda and imagine what it must have been like to look out over the Inner Harbour before the view was obscured by buildings.

A few more meters’ walk brings you to the waterfront. On the left, along Avenida Almirante Sergio, are a row of popular Portuguese restaurants. The first one, A Lorcha (5), is one of Macau’s better “new wave” Portuguese restaurants with both excellent food and an impressive wine list. A block or so north one finds O Litoral and Porto Interior Restaurants, both hidden behind fake Macanese façades and both enjoying their own clientele.

MACAU’S LANDFALL
Retrace your steps to the Largo do Pagode da Barra, a pleasant plaza fronted by an attractive green Macanese mansion that used to house the Maritime Museum now located across the street, and the A-Ma Temple (6), easily the most famous and picturesque Chinese temple in Macau. The temple was built in 1605, several decades after the Portuguese settled on the peninsula. There must have been some sort of shrine to A-Ma here before then, since it is well established that the temple existed before the Portuguese arrived and that it gave its name to Macau. The name, or a version of it, seems to have been current when the temple was built. It was extensively renovated in 1828, giving it the general appearance that it has today, indeed as it was depicted by all of the famous 19th-century artists of Macau, such as Chinnery and Auguste Bourget. The temple complex consists of four pavilions. The first three are dedicated to Tin Hau, another name for A-Ma, who is the patroness of seafarers and popular with fishermen all along the South China coast. (Approximately 20 other temples to A-Ma exist in Macau, not the least being the imposing statue recently erected on Coloane Island). The fourth and highest pavilion is dedicated to Kun Iam, the goddess of mercy. Numerous smaller side altars are for lesser Buddhist and Taoist deities.

The site is built on the side of a hill, and you ascend by winding paths and steps, relieved at intervals by small temples, shrines and inscriptions and shaded by bamboo groves and banyan trees. Enter by way of a short flight of concrete steps and through a ceremonial gate. In the courtyard is a large rock on which a Chinese junk has been carved in bas-relief. This is meant to represent the ship which, tradition holds, brought the goddess A-Ma to this place. There are various legends. The most common holds that a fleet of junks was dispatched from Fujian province with a young woman on board. A storm arose and sank all of the ships save the one with the maiden. She took the tiller and brought the ship safely to Macau. There she went ashore and disappeared. The other passengers found only a statue of the goddess. On the junk is a flag with four Chinese characters on it; they translate as “crossing the river safely.” Progressing up the hill, you pass through an oval “moon gate” painted bright red with nine dragons on the frieze. Behind is an inscription that reads, in Chinese, “the path of enlightenment.” Continue upwards past the third and perhaps shabbiest of the three temples to Tin Hau, navigating between large boulders that make the temple grounds look a little like the Camões Grotto, to the fourth and last temple dedicated to Kun Iam, the goddess of mercy. Off to the right is a curious inscription on a boulder in two red Chinese characters said to be a Taoist phrase effective against misfortune.

Across from the A-Ma Temple is the Macau Maritime Museum (7) (open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Tuesday, admission 10 patacas). The museum is attractive and informative, although it depends heavily on ship models and table displays rather than historical or genuine artifacts. Long planned, some of the original exhibits destined for a future museum were destroyed when the U.S. Navy bombed the Portuguese Navy Maritime Aviation Hangar on Taipa in 1945 by mistake. The museum proper comprises three levels. The first depicts, with various models of Chinese fishing junks and examples of fishing techniques, the life and work of fishermen along the South China coast. A model of an oyster field shows growth over five years. Level 2 focuses on the great voyages of discovery by Chinese and Portuguese explorers. A model of a Japanese warrior from Tanegashima, the island off the coast of Kyushu where, in 1543, the Portuguese set up Europe’s first trading post in Japan, underscores the importance of the Japanese connection with early Macau. Level 3 explores maritime transportation through various ages: a mock up of a ship’s bridge, more models of modern passenger ferries from steamships to the jetfoils, and replicated remains of a Song dynasty Fujian junk. A spacious café with a white tented roof occupies a tiled outdoors area between the museum and the wharf. The museum also operates two junks which make 30-minute tours of the Inner and Outer Harbours (daily except Tuesday, fare 10 patacas).

From the Maritime Museum continue walking along Rua de São Tiago da Barra to the tip of Macau’s peninsula. There one comes to the Barra Fort (8), constructed in 1629 and designed to defend the entrance to the Inner Harbour. It was at one time an elaborate complex supporting a garrison of about 60 soldiers, their stores, cannon and ammunition. In 1740 a chapel was built in the fort dedicated to St. James (S. Tiago). The cannons were sold off to earn money to help care for refugees during World War II. In 1976 the remaining carcass of the old fort was converted into a charming inn, the Pousada de S. Tiago (9). Cleverly incorporating the ruins of the fortress, the chapel, the cistern (now an ornamental fountain), and ancient trees are melded into the design. The boutique hotel has only twelve guest rooms, each furnished with antique Portuguese furniture.

Continue along the periphery road, which now becomes Avenida da Republica. This small stretch from the tip of the peninsula to the old Bela Vista Hotel still has something of the feel of the old Praia Grande waterfront as it existed before the enormous reclamation project created the Nam Van Lakes. There are trees, walkways and benches, although the vista across the Sai Van Lake is not very interesting these days. Close to the tip is a statue of Henri Dunant (10), the Swiss founder of the Red Cross. It was erected in 1997 to honor the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Macau Red Cross, whose headquarters is located in a fine complex across the street. A little further along brings one to a marvelous wedding cake of a building, in bright pink with white trim. This stately residence, the Santa Sancha Palace (11), was built in the mid-19th century as a private residence and served as the home of Portuguese governors from 1937 to the handover of sovereignty in 1999. The first Chinese Chief Executive of the Macau SAR, the scion of a wealthy banking family, chose not to live in it, preferring his own mansion on Penha Hill.

DETOUR: From Lilau Square walk up Rua Lilau, climb a flight of concrete stairs and follow the cobblestone streets to the peak of Penha Hill. This is one of the two main promontories of Macau, the other being Guia Hill. Here the Portuguese erected another small fortress which was once connected by a wall to the Dom Parto fortress on the waterfront near the former Bela Vista Hotel. In 1622 Our Lady of Penha Chapel (12) was also built, and throughout most of Macau’s history, it also had a small hermitage for monks. There was nothing much else, the peak being isolated and difficult to reach. The fort was demolished in the late 19th century, and in the 1930s the chapel was totally rebuilt in the form it is today and a small bishop’s residence was attached to it. Before the 20th century Macau’s bishops had resided at St. Paul’s or with churches belonging to their orders. In the 1970s a new residence was built next to the Cathedral, so Penha was used as a bishop’s residence for only 30-odd years. It is now part of the University of Macau.

Penha Hill provides excellent views looking out over the city and harbor, but it is a kind of dead place, the quiet disturbed only by the arrival of a tour bus chugging up the hill and disgorging a flock of Chinese tourists. In contrast with the city’s other showcase churches, all in neo-classical or baroque style, the chapel looks faintly Gothic. It is stone gray in color, with a tall steeple on one side and an iron compass on the top. The inside is unremarkable save for the lovely oval stained-glass window over the altar depicting the Madonna and Child. From Penha walk back down Estrada de D. Joao Paulino to the pink and white gates of the Santa Sancha Palace.

The palace commands a prominent position in Macau’s best residential area. The contour of the land has been unchanged since it was built, so that the building is easily visible from various parts of the city. The two-story building is very pleasing to the eye, having a perfectly symmetrical façade crowned by a curved pediment which used to boast the Portuguese coat of arms, and now the seal of the People’s Republic of China. The building is made out of plastered brick in the Pombaline style similar to the Government Palace further down the Praia (which once belonged to the same owner.) Surrounding the whole is a granite wall with Western-style parapets decorated with Chinese ceramics. At the end of the grounds is a circular belvedere with a large shade tree, which must have been a wonderful place to sit on a cool summer’s night looking out at the Pearl River and Taipa Island. It was built in typical Mediterranean style with large flowerpots standing on the balustrades. The interior is furnished with Chinese and Portuguese furniture. Down on the Praia is an excellent restaurant, Henri’s Galley (13). This unpretentious establishment has a nautical flavor – the walls are adorned with a ship’s wheel and prints of old sailing ships, oars and signaling flags, and it has a few outdoor tables. The house specialties, African chicken and spicy prawns, are excellent.

The top Portuguese in Macau moved out of Santa Sancha and into the legendary Bela Vista Hotel (14), disappointing hundreds of aficionados of what may have been Macau’s most beloved hotel. It was built in the 1870s on the ruins of the Dom Parto Fort, the oldest in Macau, whose foundations are still visible from the road. It began life as the Boa Vista Hotel in 1899, aptly named for its incomparable view over the Praia Grande Bay and Pearl River but in the succeeding 100 years underwent several permutations, becoming a secondary school (renowned Portuguese poet Camilo Pessanha once taught there) and a billet for Hong Kong civil service cadets. It reverted to being a hotel in 1967; not the best of times, considering the dearth of visitors because of the violence in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Newly known as the Bela Vista, it began rebuilding its reputation for gracious, colonial-style hospitality, each of the 23 rooms boasting high ceilings, huge bathtubs and a veranda, although the occasional peeling paint gave it a slightly seedy look. In 1990 the Mandarin Oriental hotel group undertook an expensive restoration, reducing the two dozen rooms to only eight luxury suites, earning the hotel rave reviews as one of the world’s leading boutique hotels. The last guest moved out on March 28, 1999, after the building was sold to the Portuguese government as the official residence of the consul general.

The rest of the walk provides little impression of the grandeur of the old Praia Grande. Most of this area has undergone massive reclamation in recent years. At one time a row of elegant government buildings and merchants’ mansions fronted the waterfront, but the only reminder of its glory days is the red-and-white Government Palace (15), which has served as the governor’s office since 1884. It was originally a private mansion, designed by the same architect who built the Santa Sancha. The Legislative Assembly moved to new quarters on the reclaimed island on the Nam Van Lake, and the building is now used mainly to welcome dignitaries when they arrive in Macau.

Todd Crowell’s guidebook is on sale for HK$98. More information: Explore Macau

The post Book excerpt: Explore Macau appeared first on Pete Spurrier.

Chapter 2: Drinking Games

The day’s walk was over and I returned to Chashui for dinner. I called Teacher Xu, who asked me to come to the school gates at 5.30pm. Arriving promptly, Teacher Xu led me inside to a conference room where I found a delegation of five men waiting for me, three of them in suits. Leading the delegation was Mr. Cheng Zhihua, secretary of the Qianshan County Communist Youth League, who looked about thirty-five years old. Accompanying him were his assistant, Mr. Huang, Teacher Xu and two vice-headmasters. Headmaster Chen, I was informed, was not available.

Mr. Cheng formally welcomed me to the mountains by saying, “This region is poor.”

“I think it is very beautiful,” I replied.

“We welcome people from all over the world,” he responded, so I asked how many other foreigners had passed this way. “There was an African man from Cameroon a few years ago, but apart from that, you’re the first foreigner to visit the region.” I said it was my honour.

“We are looking for investment – investors – and maybe you would be interested?” he asked.

“I am just walking through,” I replied. “I am not here looking for investments. But I do think the mountains are beautiful and there should be big potential for tourism in the long term.”

“We think so too,” he said. “There are several local hotel projects under construction, but not high class. There is no foreign investment in them.”

I suggested they should be cautious about developing lower level hotel projects to avoid the kind of damage to the scenery and environment inflicted on other places such as the once beautiful town of Guilin.

“Mr. Yan referred to a six-star hotel idea?” prompted Teacher Xu.

“I think such an idea would be great in theory, though in practice it would require a lot of patience and money and support from the local government. Outside investors are convinced about the future of China tourism, but the Dabie Mountains are very remote, and there would be a reluctance to invest.”

“Thank you for your frankness,” Mr. Cheng said. “Now it is time for dinner.”

“My treat,” I said. “Let us go to a local restaurant and have a simple meal.”

“I have arranged dinner at the best restaurant in town, a banquet for two hundred and fifty RMB,” Teacher Xu announced.

“Wow, two hundred and fifty RMB!” I said. “You have a Grand Hyatt here? I had dinner the other night for just forty RMB including beer.”

“Only forty RMB? Impossible,” Teacher Xu said.

“Our treat,” Mr. Cheng pushed.

“No no,” I said.

“Yes yes,” they said.

It was the old Chinese banquet-hosting ploy of push and pull. I decided to cave in, even though it meant no dinner for Xu Bing. I sensed they had expected me to insist but I wasn’t interested in playing their game – there were more people than planned, and two hundred and fifty RMB for a meal in Chashui was outrageous.

We drove off from the school and thirty seconds later we arrived at the local inn at which I had previously eaten for forty RMB and taken a room. We went upstairs and the toasting began. Everyone drank ‘baijiu’ (the Chinese spirit that’s from eighty to one hundred and twenty proof and is usually made from sorghum grain), except for one of the vice-headmasters who gained my respect by bucking convention and drinking beer out of the baijiu shot glasses.

The drinking culture in China is fascinating. All the strengths and genius of Chinese culture are revealed within it, as well as a few of the shortcomings. But it’s the strengths that predominate.

It is social manipulation on a scale and sophistication far beyond anything Western culture has developed. In the West everyone basically drinks alone. When a group of people gathers together and drink alcohol in Europe or the United States, they may clink glasses and say cheers once at the beginning, but after that each person drinks alone, sipping alcohol when they choose with no regard to what is happening around them. In China, no one drinks alone. Every time the glass is raised it is used to manipulate a relationship in some way. The aim is to toast each person around the table in turn, including a special look and a few words, which provides the chance for manipulation. Of course, as in the West, the aim is also to get drunk, but there’s an added layer of social interaction that comes from thousands of years of perfecting the drinking culture. The West has a lot to learn from China in the twenty-first century.

My new friends were toasting each other like mad, and with each salutation a glass was drained. I chose to sip my drink, which drew disapproving glances. Teacher Xu was the worst, making a big point of wanting me to drain the glass each time. On principle I declined, telling him my drinking capacity was clearly no match for his. I can drink large quantities of baijiu when necessary – if it is an important dinner in an outlying province and it is necessary to gain the respect of my dinner companions, but I don’t enjoy it, because a baijiu hangover is about the worst I have ever experienced. Actually, the only good thing that can be said about baijiu is that every glass tastes better than the last.

There was no way I wanted to become baijiu-drunk and have to sweat the stuff out the next day on the road.

“Mr. Yan is a cautious drinker, like myself,” Mr. Cheng said, to head off Teacher Xu. He toasted me and we continued to sip the alcohol.

Still strictly business, Mr. Cheng said investors would be able to enjoy special tax breaks for several years, and tasked his assistant Mr. Huang to visit me in Shanghai to give me materials on investment policy and opportunities in the region but as soon as he realised that I was not going to invest in any of his proposals, he stood up suddenly and said that while it had been an honour to meet me and all that, he had to leave to get back to the county seat about fifty kilometres from Chashui.

“Stay with him for a while,” he said to Teacher Xu as he left.

Teacher Xu, who I now noticed was pudgy and unfit at only twenty-nine years of age, continued to toast me, although he said at one point that he had drunk so much that if he drank much more he would explode. “That would be unfortunate,” I said, but he kept up the toast rate, and began pushing the investment line in a self-serving way. “Your plan of a six-star hotel is excellent, but you will need assistance here, and a lot of help from the local government.”

“I am sure that is true,” I said. “But, remember, I am just walking through.”

He said that being a teacher is very important and that while he’d had opportunities to develop his career outside the mountains, he had decided to work in the Chashui High School in order to help the local people.

“We play an important role, developing the patriotism of the students. Connections with the outside world are important, although I don’t like Japanese people,” he said.

This is a comment that always annoys me. “Why don’t you like Japanese people?” I asked.

“Because of the way they treated China in the war.”

“But it wasn’t the Japanese of today, it was their grandfathers,” I pointed out.

“Nanjing massacre… Yasukuni Shrine…”

“This is all history and government policy,” I said. “The British fought the Opium Wars with China. Do you think I should apologize to you for that?”

“Um, well, the Japanese government won’t admit the errors of the past.”

“That is the government. What has that got to do with the ordinary people? You think I support every policy of the British government because I hold a British passport? Should I blame you personally for the Chinese government’s activities in Sudan?” I was warming to the theme. Bloody baijiu. “Your students deserve a balanced education. To condemn Japanese people in this way is to return to the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution. In those days, as you know Teacher Xu, people were imprisoned and their lives ruined because they had a ’family background problem’, meaning their grandfather had travelled abroad, or something equally irrelevant.”

We eventually ended the impasse by agreeing that everyone in the world is equal.

Xu insisted on opening yet another bottle of beer, even though it was clear I didn’t want it and he couldn’t handle it. We drank half and then he said: “You should now go upstairs to rest.” I insisted on going down to the door with him to see him off. “Really not necessary, you go and rest,” he ordered me. “I am waiting for someone,” I replied.

“Who is it?”

“Someone I met.”

“I had better stay here and see him to make sure it is all right,” he said, playing the role of the nosy official.

“Teacher Xu, I am grateful for your concern and good wishes, but I am an adult and I wish you a good night.” I presented him with my hand to shake.

Xu Bing, damn him, chose that moment to arrive on his motorcycle and Teacher Xu went over and said a few words to him, then turned to me and said: “It’s all right, I know him.”

Teacher Xu disappeared into the night, and I smiled at Xu Bing and apologized. He brushed it aside. “Let’s have a drink and a talk somewhere,” I suggested. It was only 8pm but all was dark on the main street. Things close down early in a small Chinese mountain town. “Let’s go upstairs.”

The serving girl was unhappy because she wanted to leave. “One bottle of beer, two glasses, you go home, and I promise to turn out the light,” I said. She seemed content with this deal.

Xu Bing and I talked for a couple of hours. He was a peasant boy, but the contrast between his simple open honesty and the selfishness of Teacher Xu was refreshing.

He was twenty-two years old and, following graduation from Chashui High School at the age of seventeen, he went to Shenzhen to work in a factory for two years. Then three years before our meeting, his mother died unexpectedly and Xu Bing’s father had to undergo a heart operation. His younger sister was devastated, and he had to hurry back to look after everything. He nursed his father back to health, worked the fields and arranged for his sister to get a job in Shenzhen. His father, now better, was the man I saw working under the trellises in the fields that afternoon. “I have a girlfriend now,” Xu Bing told me, “I expect to marry her one day, but I don’t know when I will have enough money to manage it.”

Xu Bing’s excuse for talking to me was the medicinal melon seed idea he had brought up when we first met, but what he really wanted to talk about was life and responsibility and his father and his puzzlement about things in general. He expressed amazement at what he knew or guessed of my life and I gave him a pep talk, telling him how lucky he was in so many ways and how the secret to success is persistence . It was a pleasure to talk to him, to get to know him. He made me ashamed with some of his statements such as: “If I have some money and I spend it to buy some clothes for myself, I don’t feel as good as when I am buying something for my father or my girlfriend,” he said.

The next day, he would be back in the fields digging dirt, while I would be on the road and Teacher Xu would be in school. But in terms of being a human being, he was doing better than at least one of us.

It was raining when I set out in the morning, which was a big contrast from the sunny skies of the day before. I ran across the road from the inn to a little shop selling shoes and bought a pair of plastic Wellington boots for seventeen RMB (about two US dollars).

It was mostly light rain as I walked through the mist-coiled mountains that evoked classic Chinese scenes: layered ranks of mountain ranges, each one paler than the one in front, fading into a pearly glow.

Every corner I turned showed me something new and beautiful in its own way: an overhang of brilliant red flowers, or an Anhui farmhouse with chickens outside and an old woman sitting silently in the doorway, watching. Or maybe a view out over terraced paddy fields, or a three-wheeler scooter truck, with a couple of pigs in the back, churning black smoke into the sweet wet atmosphere.

I was pretty high up, about seven hundred metres above sea level according to my GPS unit, compared to three hundred metres for Chashui. At one point at about 11am, the rain turned into a storm and lightning flashed and the thunder clapped right above my head, then off to the left, then over to the right. As the rain cascaded down, I sloshed past a peasant house up on a rise, and a man called out: “Come up and have some water.” I accepted his invitation with great relief.

His name was Feng Tianbei and he said he had seen me several days before on the road about thirty kilometres to the east. A rice farmer, he had two children aged twenty and eighteen, both studying in Beijing.

“But having two children was against the law then, right?” I asked.

“They didn’t enforce the policy too strictly up here in the mountains,” Mr. Feng said. “But nowadays people only want to have one. The girls won’t agree to have more.”

His children’s studies were being financed by loans from the Industrial and Commercial Bank, which the children will be responsible for paying back once they graduate and start work. He invited me to sit on a special heated stool, which I found in all the peasant houses in this little corner of Anhui, and which I have never seen anywhere else. The circular, wooden stool has a semi-circular seat punctuated with two slit holes, while below is a metal brazier for coals – absolutely brilliant in its design.

Mr. Feng’s wife was serving lunch, and I was invited to join them in their repast. I had some white rice, which Mr. Feng himself had grown, while they ate a full meal of meat and vegetables. “And how is your life?” I asked him. “We are poor,” he responded, but then Anhui farmers always say that. I pointed to the richness of his life – the beauty of the scenery, the fresh air, fresh food. “The scenery is not beautiful,” his wife said, adding: “this house is awful.” She was right – the house was pretty awful. There were holes in the walls and holes in the roof. It was nowhere near as nice as Xu Yan’s house.

I asked about electricity, which had arrived in the region in about 1991 (the phone service was installed in 2001). They said had a black-and-white television, but no refrigerator. “We grow our own food.” Mr. Feng said. “And if I had the money, I would build a new house, which he said would cost him around seventy thousand RMB (US$8,000).” My impression was that most of the ordinary farmers in this region of Anhui Province have an income of somewhere between one hundred and three hundred RMB a month, which seemed to be enough to live a basic life.

The rain stopped and I walked on to the little town of Nishui. Xu Bing had said he would come out to see me on the road before Nishui, but he hadn’t showed up, which, given the heavy rain was understandable.

There is not much to say about Nishui. It is just another one-pig town, but it does have a little ‘supermarket’ which had its lights off to save electricity. I bought some batteries and chatted with the owner, asking him which products sell the best. “Milk powder for babies,” he said. “But mother’s milk is better, right?” I said with a smile. He didn’t respond. I directed the question again to a lady in her early thirties sitting by the door. She shook her head strongly in disagreement. The shadow of sore nipples hung in the air for a second, and I thought that with luck the milk powder on sale in Nishui was actually real, as opposed to the stuff that killed forty babies in Henan Province the year before.

On the outskirts of town, I saw a faded slogan painted on the wall over a small shop that said: ‘No matter how tough it gets, don’t make it tough for the children’. Got to agree with that! The standard of rural slogans has changed dramatically, and for the better, since I first came into contact with them in the 1970s when the walls of villages used to be plastered with phrases like ‘Long Live the Great, Glorious and Correct Communist Party’; and ‘Long live Mao Zedong Thought’. Now the predominant slogans fare or birth control or promotional lines for motorcycles and mosquito coils (‘One Spot Red’ is the main mosquito coil brand in this part of Anhui, with the character for Spot written on a red spot. It looked cool on the brown mud-brick walls).

I went up to the counter of the little shop, which measured about two metres by one metre, where was a man with a big smile sitting behind a counter stocked with fruit, nuts and seeds. Behind him were shelves loaded with alcohol, cigarettes, instant noodles, soft drinks and various simple and cheap household goods. His name was Mr. Jiang, and he was slightly drunk and chain-smoking, but gentle and courteous with the few customers who came up and bought things as we talked. He invited me to sit on a stool behind the counter and for a while I looked out at the world from his perspective.

When Mr. Jiang was ten years old, his left foot caught an infection which then spread up his leg. His mother thought he would die, and she introduced him to smoking cigarettes to ease the pain. He didn’t die, but his leg was ruined. “I have been smoking ever since… it’s been twenty-six years,” he said as he looked out at the muddy street. He had a wooden crutch even more basic than Long John Silver’s, but told me walking is painful for him and that he didn’t go very far very often. “But I hobble two kilometres to my parents’ house twice a month.” His father was seventy years old and his mother was in her late sixties.

“I have a problem with my leg too,” I said. Mr. Jiang pulled up his trouser leg and showed me the withered useless appendage, covered in purple blotches, with a handkerchief wrapped around the top of his painfully skinny thigh. “I still have puss coming out of it,” he said. “It hurts a lot.” Painkillers? “I have tried them, but they have no effect.” I showed him my right leg, which by comparison was in great shape.

Chatting about his business, he said he did about six hundred RMB in revenue a month or twenty RMB a day, and turned a profit of about one hundred RMB. Jiang slept on a bed space behind the shelf next to a small black-and-white television that was his only source of entertainment. He said there was no hope of any improvement in his life, no hope of marriage or of children.

I looked around for something to buy. “Which is better, the apples or the pears?” I asked.

“It depends what you like. The pears are pretty juicy.”

“I’ll have a pear,” I said. “How much?”

“A gift to you,” he said.

“I won’t take if it is free,” I said.

“I won’t give it to you if you pay.”

We looked at each other and smiled. Of course, I let him win. He pulled out a penknife, peeled the pear and handed it to me. It was delicious.

I bade farewell to Mr. Jiang and walked on through the afternoon. The rain had stopped, but the road ascended back into the mountains and everything was soon covered with a thick mist. By 5pm, it was time to end the walk because I could see nothing in the mist and there was no one to talk to.

The next morning was dry, but cloudy. I started out from the last place I had stopped, enjoying the sounds and smells and sights and looking for a place to sit where I could write out my notes on the past couple of days. The birds were calling, the air was sweet after all the recent rain, and the mountain views down into valleys filled with terraced fields and toy farmhouses were spectacular. The bamboo and pine mix of vegetation that enraptured generations of classical Chinese poets and artists captured my heart as well. I sat down on a road marker in the midst of this Nature wonderland and started to write.

Along the road came a man who, when he saw me, mooed in the way I had learned many mutes do. He was dirty, his eyes were askew, his brain was damaged, but he recognized me as someone different, an outsider, and he was amazed and excited. It seemed there were quite a few mentally impaired people walking the mountain roads as I was coming upon at least four or five per day. Following a couple of little incidents, I had learned to tell the difference between the dangerous and the harmless. This man was harmless, but he could say nothing, and there was nothing I could say to him in any language that he could understand. I smiled at him and tried to find a way to wordlessly express something positive. He mooed again, did a sort of a jig in excitement and then tore himself away from the engagement and walked on.

I resumed my writing, but a few minutes later I had a couple of salt-of-the-earth farm labourers inspecting my camera and asking where I came from. A few more people appeared, including a father and his son. The mute came back. It was becoming a town hall meeting, so I stood up and we all walked off along the road, the people gradually peeling off into the fields. Finally, the only people left were myself and the mute.

We passed a farmhouse with noisy chickens presumably in the process of laying the free-est of free-range eggs. Then the mute started mooing urgently and pointing to a path off the road. I shook my head to indicate I was staying on the road, and he headed off down the path by himself.

I stood and thought about it for a minute. The road was winding and twisting but perhaps he was trying to tell me it was a shortcut down to the road at a lower level. I decided to trust him and left the main road to head down the little path.

It was the right call. I found myself at the top of a peaceful valley, bordered by lush forest cover, every inch in between organized into neat paddy fields. They were ploughed and waiting, this being only mid-April. There was a babbling brook and a small path beside it leading downwards. The mute was now far below, but he turned and saw me in the distance and mooed, presumably acknowledging the fact that I was not as stupid as I had appeared when I at first rejected his guidance.

A kilometre or so down the valley, I came back to the road, which led me across a bridge where I took photographs, including some of a boy riding on the back of his bike, his hands stretched out around the seat to the handlebars. A little further along, as I stood entranced by a perfect wooded and terraced hill amidst the paddy fields, a boy came up to me accompanied by a couple of his friends. They were all surnamed Chu, and all lived in a collection of houses about two hundred metres up the gentle slope, looking out across the fields towards my favourite hill. The people working in the fields were their parents and relatives.

The boys said “Good morning.”

“What else can you say in English?” I asked and they parroted the phrases “how do you do?” and “thank you”. The boy on the bike answered all questions with the word “yes”. One of the men in the fields shouted to the boys, asking who I was. “He’s English!” they shouted back. I turned and shouted as well. “Your sons are very smart! Congratulations!”

One of the men laughed and shouted back: “Okay!”

I said goodbye and walked on, but another ten minutes later they all came tearing after me again. They wanted me to take a photo with them and for us to exchange names. They invited me to one of their homes for a meal. I said I was honoured, but I would continue to walk (I could easily have had three or four meals a day for free from these hospitable people in one of China’s poorest regions).

They had a quick discussion, then said: “Well, can we walk with you?” I said, “Sure!” and as we walked, we talked about all kinds of things. I asked them about their little village.

“Everyone is surnamed Chu,” said Chu Jun (Army Chu), aged fourteen. “People have sons, and the sons marry and the families divide up, but we all stay together.”

“What about the daughters?”

“They usually get married and move away, but they sometimes come back and visit their parents.”

“How many people altogether?”

“About twenty to twenty-five families.”

“You go to school?”

“Yes. Junior high school. The school is terrible.”

“What will you do when you graduate?”

“Go to university!” said Chu Bingbing (Soldier Soldier Chu), aged fifteen.

“And then?”

“Find work outside.”

“You won’t come back to live here?”

“No,” he said

“Then who will work the fields?” I asked.

“Our parents.”

“Well, not forever. Right?”

“Er, right.” He thought about it for a second. “Well, maybe we could hire people to work the fields.”

“Or we could sell the fields,” added Chu Jun.

What was interesting is that the only possibility not considered by the boys was working the land themselves. This was the shift in China’s population from the country to the cities in action, at its most basic level.

Two other boys joined us from the fields: Chu Kui, aged fourteen but looking more like eight, and Liu Da, aged maybe six and who was too shy to talk to me but bounced around me the whole time listening to the conversation while playing Tetris on a small hand-held machine. “He’s introverted,” Chu Jun explained.

They asked me lots of questions too. “Are there fields in England? What do English people do with the bodies of dead people? What religion are you?” I told the boys I had no religion.

“But what religion do other people in England have?”

“Many people in England are Christian,” I said. “How about you?”

“I guess we are Buddhists,” said Chu Jun.

“I like Buddhism,” I said. “It is peaceful.”

Chu Jun pointed to diminutive Chu Kui. “His father is a Taoist priest.”

“Taoism! I like that as well,” I said.

I recited the first three words of the Taoist canon, the Daodejing: “Dao ke dao (The way that can be followed…)”

Chen Jun completed the phrase. “Feichang dao (…is not the true way).”

“Ming ke ming,” I continued (the name that can be named…).

“Feichang ming (…is not the true name),” Chen Jun completed the couplet.

“What’s the next line?” I said. “I can’t remember it.”

“I can’t remember either,” he said, and we both smiled.

We were walking down a hill, and on the slope ahead of us on the right, placed by the heavens with perfect timing, was a shrine. It was small and simple, with walls painted white and a peaked tiled roof. Over the door were four characters: ‘Whatever you ask for, there will be a response (you qiu bi ying)’.

“There used to be a vicious dog guarding it, so you couldn’t go in, but the dog has gone,” Chu Jun said.

We walked up the steep steps and went inside. There were two circular straw mats on the floor in front of a shelf on which were placed three statues of the Buddha in different incarnations, with an incense burner in front of them.

“Do you want to pay your respects to Buddha?” Chu Jun asked me.

I said yes. He pulled a couple of sticks of incense from a box by the burner, lit them, and handed one to me. We knelt down together. “Now make a request,” he said to me as Liu Da continued battling the Tetris blocks beside us. I made one and Chu Jun took my incense stick and placed both sticks into the incense ash in the burner. We went back outside into the sunlight, with the wide valley laid out below. I felt good.

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