Fujian (Jan 15-20)

My first taste of China was scrumming with fellow passengers to board the plane at Suvarnabhumi International. Thailand has clearly been hit by the PRC tourist tsunami; I spotted one non-Chinese person on an Air Asia flight packed solid and armed with mandarin-speaking stewardesses.

We reached Xiamen after dark, roaring in at rooftop level over the docks where my great-grandfather (probably) boarded ship a hundred years ago. With its neon lighting, karaoke clubs and brand-name retail stores, the city by night could be any prosperous Asian metropolis. It evokes Hong Kong, down to the offshore island where foreigners can shelter as far from the Chinese as possible.

On Gulangyu one wakes to the sound of piano music, at least before the 8:00am arrival of the local tour groups with their megaphone-wielding guides. Known for producing classical musicians, the island is studded with the architectural legacy of Xiamen's concession zone. At night the old consulates and gardens are garishly lit, giving the place a themepark feel. A wander through the still-inhabited old town restores some authenticity.

By day Xiamen shows more character, with old houses, markets and even schools tucked away in the lanes that wind off the harbour promenade. Barring small details like the headmikes worn by street vendors, the scene might have been lifted from the treaty port days.

The city's tourist trail includes a 19th-century fort enconscing the world's largest extant Krupp gun, and a university that's a concrete statement of China's faith in education.

The next morning I braved the organised chaos of a Chinese bus station, being shouted to the right vehicle for the two hour haul to Quanzhou. All of Fujian appears under construction, which along the highways seems to consist mainly of two-storey houses with western motifs (balustrades, Corinthian columns, Florentine domes) thrown in at random. The remaining scraps of flat land are given to agri- or aquaculture, with stilthouses and fishfarms squeezed up against the city fringes.

Unlike Xiamen, Quanzhou gives a vibe of being in the halfway house of economic reform. Here I was introduced to a new level of Chinese comfort (squat toilets without doors). Motorbikes swarm the streets, completing my crash course in local road rules.

Road rules in China

- Road markings are strictly decorative (this includes zebra crossings).
- Traffic direction is a relative concept.
- Sidewalks double as motorbike lanes.
- Passengers can be picked up anywhere, e.g. in the middle of freeways.
- One does not 'give way', even to oncoming semitrailers.
- Horns substitute for everything.
- Size doesn't matter.

Quanzhou's attractions evoke the city's heyday as the world's leading port, a title conferred by Marco Polo. The maritime museum contains exquisite ship models and exhibits detailing Chinese nautical technologies, together with the length of time it took the West to copy them. There's also a collection of relics left by medieval expatriates, with Islamic, Hindu, Nestorian and even Catholic headstones on display. In the city centre stands one of China's oldest mosques, with no trace of local architectural influence.

Nearby is an active temple to Guanyu. Quanzhou also boasts a Buddhist complex founded in the 7th century (Kaiyuansi), which at 7:00am was full of old people doing taichi or wandering round with no apparent purpose.

Chongwu is an hour's bone-jarring busride from Quanzhou, inhaling the scents of the Chinese countryside (construction dust and cigarette smoke) all the way. The 16th-century fort is preserved in situ, save for being literally crammed to the walls with people. I took a hair-rising 6-minute motorbike ride through the winding alleys, ending up at the beach on the other side. On a rocky promontory stands a Mazu temple facing out to sea, as appropriate for the patron goddess of sailors.

The fort contains a mini-town, in which all the buildings seem to be constructed from stone. Exploring it on foot with my camera out attracted hordes of children, to whom I offered the added curiosity of an obvious tourist who looks like a local.

Stone carving is the regional specialty, and the seafront below the fort is given to a statue park full of figures from Chinese history and myth. It includes what must be China's largest sculpture, a three-storey rendering of General Qi pondering how to smite the Japanese.

China's wanton filth anywhere off the main streets is depressing, but hardly unique if you've travelled elsewhere in Asia. Likewise the ubiquitous hawking and spitting soon merges into the background noise. More oppressive is the air pollution and the endless numbers of people. One result of the latter is a service culture that gives short shrift to anyone, anytime: transactions are done fast and at high volume.

In consequence few people seemed to notice (or care about) the broken mandarin of the apparent local with bad dress sense, so long as I handed over the money. For foreigners, that's easier said than done.

Money in China

- ATMs with Visa or Cirrus/Maestro labels are rare. Those that have them don't always work (e.g. the machine allows a balance enquiry but no withdrawal).
- ATMs may run out of money, even during business hours.
- Banks are the only legal place to change foreign currency. Bring your passport, and don't bother on weekends.
- It once took me an hour to change money at the Bank of China (45 minutes waiting, 15 at the teller).
- Even upscale restaurants may not accept foreign credit cards.
- Everyone checks notes for forgeries. Fast-food outlets have scanners.

A good place to see customers being processed rather than served are China's specialty food restaurants, such as Xiamen's Huangzehe. They resemble dispensaries in a refugee camp, with patrons jostling ticket in hand for doleouts from sour-faced cooks. Dishes are small but rich, with Huangzehe's offerings packing in enough oil and spice to make any Southeast Asian gourmand queasy.

I began my fourth morning being bundled into an illegally-parked minivan, together with an Intrepid group of 3 Chinese guides, one Cuban-American and two 20-something lawyers from the UK. The winding road to Yongding lets you see Fujian at its poetic best: 'bashan yishui yifentian' (eight parts mountain, one part river, one part cultivation).

Sprawling across the hills of southwest Fujian, Yongding county is famous for its tulou, earthern redoubts of the Hakka people that house entire clans. Many are round and all contain a central courtyard, hence the claim that US satellite analysts mistook them for missile silos.

The location of choice is Hongkeng village, a national park created by cordoning off a whole community. It's as bucolic as one could wish, ruffled only by the occasional motorbike and piles of tourist merchandise at the entrance to every tulou worth visiting.

One clanhead has converted his building into a charming guesthouse, where you can dine in 18th-century ambience before retreating to rooms with satellite TV. After days of rushing round on stumbling mandarin it was nice to kick back with the Intrepid group, talking US and British politics while freeloading on their cooking session.

The next day our host agreed to drive me round the countryside for 250 yuan, including the trip to Yongding city to catch my train for Guangzhou. This whole region seems to have a near-exclusive Hakka population. Tulou are scattered throughout, all inhabited and most several centuries old, with one relic dating to 1308. The floors have been built up over the generations.

In a couple of these places the louzhu (manor lord) treated me to tea and an exposition on their building's venerability, as well as the range of foreigners who pay money to see it (French and Israelis seem common).

Perhaps the most picturesque tulou cluster is Tianloukeng, perched on paved stone terraces cut into the hillside.

Wandering the riverside town of Taxiacun, I was led to the local temple by a precocious 8 year old who flatteringly mistook my mandarin for that of a Thai tourist. She insisted on taking me back to her tulou, where her mother sat me down for tea and the usual conversation: I am indeed Chinese, I come from Australia, I'm travelling alone...

I wanted to stay past sunset to see the riverside lanterns, but my host convinced me that the drive down an unlit single-lane mountain road wasn't worth it. It was dark before we reached Yongding city, and past 10 o'clock when I was waved by barking conductors off the freezing platform and onto my train carriage. The open sleeping compartment proved quite tolerable, if you don't mind food carts trundling down the corridor and people spitting in the corners.