If you go to Kyoto you’re potentially looking for traditional Japan.  Geisha spotting, an invitation to a tea ceremony, admiring carefully-altered-to-perfection gardens, visiting the shrines and tasting all the detailed nuanced flavour of this ancient culture are the activities on the traveller’s agenda in Kyoto.  Some of these things you can pre-arrange but some are pot luck and sometimes you need the gods to smile on you…
Which is what happened to me at the Yasaka Shrine.  At the top of the main traffic street in Gion, Shijo dori, most tourists will be tempted by the bright red gate of this shrine by default because it’s right there and enter to find a shrine kept carefully lovely – it’s role in the important Gion Matsuri festival gurantees it’s gorgeous up keep.  It’s main focus as a shrine is keeping people safe from illness, but it has other practical uses – namely as a wedding venue.  And I was lucky enough to see two beautiful, traditional Shinto brides on their big day.  In her heavy, heavily embroidered white kimono, with its long train, fan and head gear one bride was pleasant temperedly having her photo taken with her new husband, also dressed beautifully, and I was totally taken in an stared at here like she was some kind of exquisite artefact – which in a way she was.  A thing of great beauty which totally distracted me from admiring the temple…  But I’m sure it was lovely if this wonderful creature would choose it for her nuptials.

May the Shinto spirits smile on her as they smiled on me when arranging that I come out the nearby Maruyama Park at just the right moment in the gentle Autumn rain.

Arriving in Kyoto from Tokyo is at first not much of a shift.  The station is ultra modern and the sign-age points you in a thousand different directions, to the bus, the train, the shops, the coin lockers, the toilets the JR station, the Subway station, the rail line…  You get the idea…  But one you’re out of the station it is almost unbelievably different to the Tokyo I had just come from.  Narrow houses, traditional style houses with bamboo shades and wood features line narrow streets running along beside twinkling canals and you can see the top of temples and shrines peeking over the top of the houses behind high gates.  It doesn’t seem like a city in the same sense of the word, but a slower, gentle old town.
Walking beside the canal on the ‘Philosopher’s Walk’, named for the university philosophy lecturer who used to partake in this stroll every evening, it is peaceful.  There may be tall buildings and traffic, but all I can see is those narrow houses on either side of the canal with it’s draping trees and fat, happy carp.  Tea houses, and shops – some of them no doubt lures for tourists, but it’s out of season so the shop keepers are leisurely – and the tori gates which signify a shine is near, or a particularly nice tree or bridge are the landmarks.
I wander humble and peaceful as a cloud… when suddenly I see a man accompanied by a woman in one of the most beautiful kimonos I have ever seen.  I could be on a film set for a film I’d love to be in.  How lucky I feel at this small encounter – you can see that I’m getting into the tea ceremony ethos of making each moment its most lovely.  I wonder if I can move here….

P.S. TRAVEL TIPS:  The new section of Kyoto station is a massive rabbit warren and it’s difficult to find the Subway - accept that you may have to follow the signs into what feels like an entirely different postcode…  And try the vending machine coffee…As well as having a choice of hot or cold and it being about a quarter of the price of a cafe version they have very entertaining names.

Walking through the Ginza district I saw a line of people in carefully arranged and put together outfits queuing for something.  I hate queues but this one was a quiet, patient double file of people at the most outrageous whispering quietly, so the guards wearing sea blue Army uniforms with badges saying TaskForce and white gloves were having an easy time of herding them in line across roads and keeping them out of the way of the pedestrian public.  Turning a corner and walking a couple of blocks  (250 metres) down I found out they were queuing to be allowed into H&M.  And even more surprisingly, unlike the Topshop sales, people were exiting sedately carrying only one bag.  Who could queue for over an hour to go into a store then only buy a few things.  Apparently the well behaved, gracious Japanese Ginza shoppers.  I immediately set my behaviour drive to very good and smoothed out my dress – luckily I packed for a city rather than trekking holiday but still…  When in Rome and all that…
People not bumping you with their umbrellas and patiently waiting their turn aren’t the only charms of Tokyo, you’re also asked to turn your phone onto silent on the train and not answer calls, so the subway is quiet peaceful, clean and free of smelly food.  The city seems to be pretty clean as well, and the girls dressed in their long socks and boots all look to me like they’ve made an effort – I love it.  Even as I fumble though my poor knowledge of the language people have been politeness personified – am I lucky or is this city really this gracious as a whole?  How can it be?
Earlier in the day I’d been at the fish markets, probably getting into people’s ways with my camera, and possibly even making a face at the sheer scale of marine carnage around me – I saw a tuna longer than I am tall have its massive head cleaved from the rest of it.  It was enough to put me on to vegetarian sushi and ramen for the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow as well…  I have never before seen the things that I saw there.  Have you ever seen a fish turned inside out so its roe are showing?  No?  Me neither.  And I used to hang out at the Sydney Fish Markets all the time.  It was as manic as the guide books say it will be and then a few slivers more.  The main mode of transport is a drum engine lowered on to the top of a four wheeled tray which looks like the kind of truck a five year old would make out of lego, and these are driven wild with abandon.  I don’t think there are any road rules.  There certainly aren’t any rules about not smoking around what will be food – some of it won’t even be cooked, though there is so much ice and water around that it shouldn’t matter – I’m just trying to make the point that these guys work to rules of their own.  Even if you’re only in Tokyo for one day you should see this.  Seriously.  It’s definitely worth getting up early for.
My afternoon was spent with Mr. Fuji (actual name.), who was my guide around the Edo Tokyo Museum, he was a child in WW2 when the allies were fire bombing Tokyo and one of the most graceful, reserved men I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.  The perfect guide he gave me just enough information to go on with and let me ask questions.  He knew a lot about samuri and Edo period wood block printing and let me ring a big old bell – he could tell I wanted to – as well as play some musical instruments, even though I think they were really only for children to play with.

This blog was written while travelling at 300km p/h on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto.  I’m typing rather than writing but if I was writing you’d think I was sitting at a desk which was travelling at much lower speeds – beside me sits a rather classy looking woman with one of those ‘this-years-must-have-handbags’ who begun the journey working on her laptop on a marketing presentation but is now playing her PSP.  I love Japan.  It’s so full of easy metaphoric comparisons – people, like my charming chair-mate just keep dropping them into my lap.  And I just saw Mt. Fuji outside the window.

I’m standing in Tokyo Central Station looking at a map asking myself “How do I get to ‘pregnant lady standing beside a tree and square lantern’ via ‘man’s head in a hat, water pump and tree on a box’?”.  I step outside myself for a minute to ask myself “What’s wrong with this picture?”.  Literally.
Japanese has three different character sets.  I know this from studying this at school.  Hiragana corresponds to particular sounds like our alphabet, Katakana, which are broken up parts of the more complicated Kanji (Kanji’s the third one in case all this Japanese is reducing my ability to be understood in English.) - which are basically one picture for one word.  Since being in Japan I have come to discover that there are no useful maps of the city where roads are all marked in any language…  which is how I found myself at Kyoto station looking to get to ‘pregnant lady standing beside a tree and square lantern’ via ‘man’s head in a hat, water pump and tree on a box’.  I meant to mention this tip earlier but this is the best advice I can offer about travelling in Japan – don’t try and read the script – half the time sentences are made up of characters from all three alphabets – but when place names are concerned make up little stories for each character – they’ll probably be in Kanji and untranslatable into anything other than the place name…  How sorry do you feel for Japanese children now? Especially when I struggle to say even the simplest thing in Japanese and people rush to my rescue to help me in their best English…  I could do with some help learning languages from the smallest kid – but this is a nation that could do with some help with their mapping.  Beware – up is not north by default…  I’d like to be able to recommend where to get the best map from – if anyone knows can you tell me…  Until then is ‘pick up sticks beside a waffle, fork with the middle prong the longest’ near ‘man’s head in a hat, water pump and tree on a box’?

In the last two weeks I have been to the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace, and though wonderful I would recommend the simple temple of the Meiji Jingu over the others because it really is a place for meditation and contemplation.  It’s in the middle of a park, cool and dense with a wood of trees donated by people from all over Japan as a tribute to the Emperor Meiji who this shrine was built for.  The idea of that gesture is very touching when you learn about it sitting in the cool shelter of this wonderfully soundproofing wood in a the courtyard of a shrine which seems about as far away from the busy streets of Harajuku as it could be, and part of another, slower, more gracious time.
Simple in design, the cyprus trees have been shaped in the same way as the temples I have quickly become familiar with, but unpainted they have a piousness the ornate bright and beautiful reds, greens, golds and blues cant match.  Two big trees grow in the courtyard spreading up to the green copper roofs, and though the gates are grand and cafefully designed they’re also simple and lovely.
But the thing that really makes a difference is the atmosphere of genuine respect.  People come here to say their prayers and worship the Kami, the Shinto spirits, of Emperor Meiji and his Empress Shoken, Japan’s rulers at the beginning of the 20th Century, who really sound like open minded, honest rulers, if ever there be any.  This feeling of atmosphere may have been helped along by the fact that I saw a few monks, and a few people meditating in the grounds and there is a ring of wooden prayer tokens hanging all around one of the trees on which wishes and prayers are written in many languages.  Many of them are quite serious but some of them wish simply for a good result in exams or a passed driving test - I appreciate the honesty - many of us faced with the prospect of publicising our deepest wishes would have to opt for something less selfish.
Worshipers wash their hands outside the courtyard grounds before approaching the main temple then toss coins, 50 yen is an auspicious amount, take a moment to pray clap twice then take another moment.  They seem un-bothered by the respectful visitors watching on, and for those of us who aren’t comfortable taking part in something they don’t quite understand you can still buy a prayer marker - like a wooden christmas tree decoration you write on - for 500 yen and make your prayer publicly or get a poem from the collection of 100,000 written by Emperor Meiji and 30,000 written by Empress Shoken.
Mine, by Empress Shoken, reads:
Ever downwards water flows,
But mirrors lofty mountains;
How fitting that our heart also
Be humble, but reflect high aims.
Enough to make me go home and learn more about Meiji and the Shinto faith, which must surely be a good result as far as Meiji’s Kami is concerned.

This quietly spiritual interlude came between some of Japan’s most glorious, gaudy wonder, the twin towered wonder of its Town Hall, the crispy seediness of the clean red light district of unsubtle yet un-obvious love hotels where you rent by the hour, and the bright colours of wacky shopping mecca Harajuku….  Proving that there is no place more eclectic than Tokyo.   Assaulting the senses first with bloody minded precision and meticulous modernity, then asking me to reconsider what I believe in before topping it off by wooing me with sparkly colour and teasing my materialistic streak after I had began to reconsider what everything may be about.  So now I have no idea again, but as I write this at 1:35 in my hotel room I have that buzzing of thoughts that people talk about getting from Tokyo so at least I’ve proved the cliches right.  I’m going down to the bar to see if Scarlet Johansson or Bill Murray are down there whiling away the neon of the Tokyo night…

Arriving in Tokyo I was already so used to seeing and hearing Chinese that Japanese looked and sounded strangely familiar - could it be that I am less lost in translation here than there?  My hotel has a heated toilet seat, the skyline is a mass of neon shining off the wet ground that would make the Cinematographer of Bladerunner call for additional film, and young girls are queuing around the block to shop in a H&M store in Ginza, but after a Japanese pancake, some sake and a walk around the mad colourful shopping district I have my arigato nod just so.  Tokyo starts properly tomorrow.

I had seen photos of the cable car leading up to sections of the Great Wall of China but I hadn’t seen any photos of the tobogganing slide going down.  From that opening sentence you may think that I visited Great Wall: Tour Group Central, but I didn’t; Mutianyu is one of the best preserved sections of the wall but it’s not the most heavily touristed.  Fair play about the cable car, it’s a very steep trip up to the wall in this section, the mountains rise straight up, stepping out of the flat plain Beijing sits on, and a lot of people would have been unable to walk on the wall if they hadn’t been able to get up in the cable car, but when I got up to the first landing there was a television production crew filming some kind of song and dance spectacular, a stage had been set up and there were red lanterns everywhere as well as kids singing and dancing and men flying kites.  I have no idea what the occasion was but it can’t happen every day – neither can the wave after wave of kids playing chasings around the first few guard towers and families sat on the wall having picnics, but then the views of the surrounding hills are impossible for me to put into words – you’ll have to look at the photos and watch the video when I finish it, so it is a great spot for a picnic.
A few hundred meters on as the arrow flies the people start to thin out and the going gets a little steeper, the final open section to the left has really steep stairs to climb and there was a nice sense of international comaraderie as people gee’d each other on to get to the top section, where, as well as an even more indescribable view there was a fellow wall walker singing songs from the Peking Opera?  Strange and probably an impossibly unlikely one off but I’m sure it will be one of my enduring memories of this trip to Beijing.  Also enjoying the entertainment were a group of people working on repairing the next section of wall, with a horse who was looking precarioulsy over the edge at us.
Older people had stalls along the wall selling cold drinks, including beer which they kept offering all the men speaking English, they bring their wares up every day on mules, you can see the mules on the tracks beside the wall.
The toboggan slide was a long stretch in the other direction.  And it was a regular toboggan track, like a big slide.  Yep, it is a logical way to get down the mountain, but it kinda jars with the kinds of things I was thinking about while I was walking along the wall, namely how brilliant it is that such a huge undertaking could actually exist, but it brings in the money which supports the local economy, and it looked really fun, so I went on it.  Another example of things being not quite as I had expected.
On the hundred minute drive out from Beijing not only did we fail to hit anyone on the roads, we also saw more examples of China’s extremities.  Women picked and peeled corn cobs next to posh golf courses and people rode rickshaws while talking on their mobile phones.
Walking though the hutongs its clear that some people don’t have very much, but while in Kensington you can expect to have your bike stolen even if you have it locked up, in Beijing it seems like no one has a bike lock.  Storm seemed to think that if people found their bike missing they just took the next bike along, or that people didn’t have the kind of bikes worth stealing.
It’s a cliché but people were warm and friendly and the food was cheap and fantastic…my tip - definitely try the tiny apples on sticks covered in toffee, I left it too long.

Watching the film ‘The Last Emperor’ and a brisk semesters jaunt through Chinese history – where I’ll admit I began to lose track of the names and can only really remember Empress Cixi, like an evil step mother salivating for power, Jin Pin, the shockingly unattractive (sorry Jin), concubine and poor Pu’yi and Guangxu, the last and next to last Emperors – was enough to tug my heartstrings towards the prison of perfect luxury that was the fabled Forbidden City.  But even if I knew nothing about it the name would be enough to make me want to visit.  The photos of it all show it shining in opulent, detailed majesty, empty and spacious but it’s quite a bit different when you’re there with the hoards of tourists who daily invade what was once one of the most exclusive places on earth.

What I’m saying is that it wasn’t as I expected it to be.  I thought it was going to be a life sized museum to the life and times of several ancient ruling dynasties, but I failed to consider what the People’s revolution might have done to the place, which is basically gut a whole lot of it to use for other purposes and let some sections deteriorate from misuse.  The audio guide, which I HIGHLY recommend if you want to do anything other than admire the beautiful buildings, tells some of the story, but it’s pretty much the sole source of information in English – which is fine – but there isn’t much more in Chinese and crowds of people swarm through its photogenic central axis like it’s a zoo, stopping only to have their photos taken rather than gasp quietly and reverently like you’re expected to do at Versailles or Windsor Castle.  It wasn’t what I was expecting but then a lot of China so far has been different to my rather romantic expectations.

The Forbidden City was still wonderful, but I didn’t get to sit in the gardens and read over poems written by the emperors as I had hoped to do, there were just too many people -  and gift shops -  and I when I carefully ordered my jasmine tea it was served in a paper cup.  Off the main scenic route along the way of harmoniously named and themed temples are the West and East palaces which turned out to be the place for people like me wanting to hear from some of the ghosts of the place.  Here, where it is too time consuming and labyrinthine for the sheperded tour groups to dwell, the soap opera of intrigue that was the court life of the people who lived here began to unfold.  Thanks to the audio guide I was able to linger in awe over small details, like the places where grieving concubines were blinded by their floods of tears and the like.  It’s surprisingly quiet, and the walls are like the ones in the film ‘The Labyrinth’, that go on and on in all directions. So I left – kicked out at 5PM! - with my head filled with romantic stories and still wanting to go and live there, albeit, in what role I’m not sure, despite the glamour a lot of people seemed to be pretty unhappy.
A beeline to Beihai Park (open ’til 9), rewarded us with all the things the guide books say it will, including a vista of lotus leaves and flowers and a man using a huge water brush to write calligraphy.  Another active local senior inspired me about my own retirement, she comes in every day and feeds the park cats, which are lovely silky things, not at all manky strays – could be because she’s keeping them well fed.  I got the impression she just takes it on herself to do it, and what a relaxing way to spend an evening - the park is really lovely, all graceful willows and a smattering of temples.  I love the way this city has such perfectly beautified areas.  The narrow hutongs with all their colour, life and market trade community atmosphere are charming to me but may not be the easiest setting to live your life in but these parks and public spaces are purely lovely for lovely’s sake – like the lotus flowers and the orange fish – purely for ornamental purposes.

I like to think of myself as a traveller rather than a tourist - I think a lot of us do, but it can be hard not to fall into the tourist traps - especially when you’re lured in by people who speak the same language as you do in a city where the language sounds lovely but like it’s totally devoid of punctuation.  But there are certain sights that both the visitor looking to ‘find’ a place and the tourist looking to ’see’ it will meet up at, and Beijing’s Temple of Heaven is one of those places on everyone’s ‘must do’ list, so there I was standing in awe at the construction of something so entirely original that each piece of its roof fits perfectly together without the need for nails, and around me Chinese senior citizens in red hats are asking to have their photo taken with me.  But it’s all fun and I’m quite honoured to have my photo taken with them in front of something so beautiful and strongly tied to their culture.  After all this is quite a cool experience for me in itself, as are the rogue temple cats who prowl the grounds, the many security people who seem so relaxed in their roles that one of them was actually hiding behind a stone prayer pillar in the Hall of Echos, and the fantastic woman who began an impromptu set of tai chi moves in the Temple of Heaven courtyard.  Without seeing these things I would still have seen a beautifully constructed, in the round on three tiers, carefully decorated, in blues, greens and golds, set on a raised marble three tiered dais, all hand carved about two hundred and fifty years ago, temple, but this was real life.  And one of the Red Seniors pointed out to me that each of the many, many gold dragons on the roof had had its eyes delicately painted in to look like the googly eyes on a toy, which was a brilliant discovery and one only available to people with enough zoom on their cameras, or those who have the knowledge passed on to them.  Suffice to say that I did check a lot of dragons after that and they all had painted eyes as I was promised.

It’s an auspicious spot, the point where heaven and earth are supposed to meet up and I thought everyone was surprisingly relaxed for something with such a grand cultural story, but despite the people loitering all over the marble stairs and pretty girls having their photos taken by their men - not to mention people having their photo taken with me - there was an attitude of relaxed interest but none of the quiet shushing I heard in my head when I looked at it - it is really very beautiful - so I was touched to see fantastic tai chi woman start up her moves and I’m sure she was at least as impressed as I was with the significance of the things this spot and building represent. All the temples line up perfectly and if you enter from the North Gate like I did you may find that you’ve done the highlight first and only get to see the grand approach to the temple when you’re walking away from it.

Early in the day we’d been exploring the hutongs, the narrow alleyways that used to be the main buildings in Beijing.  Think an unplanned city of shanties and one storey houses around courtyards where shops and houses are all mashed in together and the private and public spaces grow all over each other.  I was expecting more of Beijing to look like this - it does in the movies - but a lot of it is now wide roads and tall apartment blocks.  We started at the art shop end - I have a thing about beautiful stationery and the Chinese do it to perfection - and walked through to the more tourist friendly alleys of ancient tea houses, silk warehouses and Chinese medicine stores.  In the best ones no one could really speak any English and though I wanted to buy things from the most authentic stores it was difficult to explain the tea I wanted when there are a choice of over 100 and I don’t know the Chinese word for flower.  The street off Tiananmen Square has been flattened and rebuilt in a way that makes it look like European architects trying to copy Chinese design - or else that it’s going to be a China Disney or permanent film set - but that’s probably because it’s empty, it’s another Olympic development that will probably come into it’s own in a few months - or else will be filled with Starbucks and Gaps…which would be awful.

My policy when walking around the city has expanded from crossing the road with the oldest person I can find to choosing to walk up the prettiest street I can see.  This means I haven’t always taken the most direct route but it’s been scenic and I’ve seen such delights as a service station called ‘Easy Joy’, a scorpion writhing on a stick in a row of scorpions on sticks ready for cooking in the night market, and been through about five additional security checks - they’re in all subway stations and the guards are cute and pretending to be serious.  I also saw the the headquarters of CCTV - China Central TV - and wondered at the brilliant choice of name and why comedians every where haven’t fallen all over it!  Most interestingly I’ve seen a lot of people.  You hear that China’s strength is in its population but the proof is in the massive workforce.  All the people employed cleaning the streets with brooms and guarding random buildings seem like they’re just waiting until they can retire and take their chairs out onto the street and play chess, cards, sing or just people-watch.  This nation and civilisation is responsible for some truly wondrous monuments and brilliantly designed buildings and now it seems the older generation is free to relax on the streets watching the world go by or entertain themselves talking to western girls who return their smiles and agree to having their photo taken.

That thing about Chinese people changing their names to make them easier for us Westerners to say is well known but I’m proud to say that the man, who on a cruise ship would be called an ‘Entertainments Officer’, in this hotel is called Storm.  I’m assuming that’s not his job title, but he is fab and deserves it if it is.  He recommended that instead of just going to the Summer Palace on the Subway we go via the Beijing Zoo and go on a pleasure boat cruise.  The price of the zoo was included in the ticket so I got to see some Pandas, which I wasn’t expecting.  One of them was asleep - apparently another cultural difference is that in China is that it’s totally acceptable to tap the glass to get zoo animals attention – but the result is still the same louche ambivalence from these ever smiling faces.  Pandas are lovely, and far more people were crowding around them than the kangaroos, so I gave those fellow ex-pats a bit of attention to tide them over on the way to the pleasure boat.  The canal ride probably wasn’t quite what it was when the royal family used to travel along it to get to their summer home away from home, but it was still entertaining if only for the fantastic tour group which joined us and sat engrossed in the loud commentary which was delivered almost without pauses for breath and definitely without punctuation.

As an aside, it appears that when Chinese people go into retirement they’re taken around the sights in matching hats like school children. First we saw the red caps, then the navy caps then the red cap and vests then the yellow hats then my favourites, the Burberry Sailors.  Obviously this is not true but a large percentage of visitors to the Summer Palace today were older Chinese nationals.  I was surprised that quite a few people wanted to have their photo taken with me.  I think they must have thought I was an Olympian hanging back to take in the sights and I began to consider which event it was I may have competed in and whether I may possibly have won a medal…  But that is definitely an aside…

…From the Summer Palace, where all my attention really lay.  What a beautiful thing to create, a whole, lovely landscape, attractive views and ornate buildings as far as the eye can see in all directions.  If I had an endless supply of labour I would love to create something even half as beautiful.  I hope all the matching hats were proud; it was really magical.  Not all of it has been repainted and kept perfectly but that only made it seem more precious and real, for example on the Seventeen Arched Bridge each lion has been carved with some kind of lizard climbing on it, some had a few on their heads which looked annoying while others had crushed the invaders under their feet – my favourite ones looked like they were about to shake them off playfully – but the fact that each one was original and imperfect in their differences made everything seem like so much more of an achievement.  The paintings in the Long Corridor gave me the same feeling of quiet achievement, the patterned roof of individual gold dragons on blue was so much more fantastic because if the slight differences in the dragons. Labour intensive, expensive and wonderful, each dragon I’m sure was painted with its own story playing out in the mind of the artist.

I went the scenic route around the lake which meant that for a long time we walked alone beside lotus thick waters and narrow pathways lined with willows.  It was silent and misty, the hills around us dotted with pagodas which I knew to be miniatures because I’d done the research but they still impressed me – who would think to build scaled down pagodas to improve the view, geniuses that’s who!  I carefully considered the intentions behind the Temple of Collecting Moisture, and The Hall of Happiness and Longevity and the Gate whose Eaves Capture the Clouds, but my favourite was the Temple of Heartfelt Contentment.  I sat on a beautiful stone carefully selected to be positioned in that spot purely for my enjoyment and I enjoyed the beauty of beauty and ornateness for the sake of pure pleasure, watching the boats sail across the lake, their yellow dragon heads only improving on the view.

Later as we were the last to leave the Lama Temple and had to rush down the steep stairs – the Lama Temple is the one you see rising, round on the hill in all the photos – because the staff were hosing off the beautiful goldfish-orange rooves to keep them in pristine condition, I thought about China’s labour-intensive traditions and about how many people it must always have taken to keep the Summer Palace wonderful, and I wondered if they enjoyed the part they played in creating all that beauty or if it was just a job.