Chinese puzzle

In all my travels, I have never visited anywhere that is more a mass of contradictions than China. It may be the world's fastest-growing economy and on its way to becoming the 'powerhouse of the east' , but as a country, it is caught uncomfortably between the 21st century and the 1950s.

The fruits of the economic boom are everywhere. China is home to the world's tallest building (Shanghai World Financial Center), the largest dam (Three Gorges), one of the most iconic stadia (Bird's Nest) and the second-fastest passenger train (the Maglev, which can reach speeds of 270mph). A beer costs £5 in Shanghai, while it's £100 to cuddle a panda in Chengdu.

But on other development indicators – such as democracy, human rights, healthcare and the environment – China is making negligible progress or even moving backwards. It has a per capita wealth similar to that of Namibia, while 500 million rural Chinese do not have access to clean drinking water.

The 'great firewall' may have come down to allow unrestricted internet access for the duration of last summer's Olympics (at which China won more gold medals than the US for the first time), but Beijing's 30,000 cyber-police (Chinese checkers?) were just enjoying an extended tea-break, and a quarter of websites are blocked. Hence me having to write this travelogue retrospectively (is me bemoaning the lack of single women on my trip really a threat to Communism?) and asking Legon to update my Facebook status (so the literals weren't my fault). Type 'Tiananmen Square' into Google and all you get is a tourist guide to the square – all references to the events of 1989 have been airbrushed from history.

Trying to engage somebody in a conversation about the political system is met with an ashen face and a solemn declaration that such a subject is taboo. Every day, our guide had to make a list of where every member of the group was, for official purposes, while foreigners are allowed to stay in only designated hotels. And our itinerary had to be altered because the government didn't want us going anywhere near Tibet.

On a day-to-day basis, the country manages to continually surprise. Even on the busiest street in Shanghai, people stop and stare at Westerners. As our Chinese guide spoke to us in English, we were surrounded by locals of all ages. They came so close, I thought they were going to start poking us with sticks. Young children do not wear pants and sport trousers with long slits in that allow them to go to toilet where they stand (parents do not take them somewhere discreet to do their business – I witnessed a baby having a number two on Beijing's main shopping thoroughfare and another having a wee in the middle of a 10-deep queue to get into Chairman Mao's mausoleum).

Then there is a perplexing etiquette system. Every night at dinner, our guide castigated us for 'crimes' such as standing up to serve ourselves food from the lazy susan or lifting our bowl off the table. 'Chinese people wouldn't do it that way,' was her continual refrain. Yet while serving themselves from the communal dishes, everybody dropped food (including her) from their chopsticks (which had been in the user's mouth), only for someone else to pick up those same pieces, as the table revolved. No wonder a cold spread between all 13 of us within a couple of days.

The food itself also took some getting used to. We ate as a group almost every night, feasting on up to 15 dishes for about £3 per person. But the guide, who did all the ordering, had to ask for dishes to be brought 'without bones', much to the perplexity of the waitresses. We had lunch one day at a farmer's house, which was all very nice until the final dish came out – chickens' feet. Most of us couldn't disguise our repulsion. But our 25-year-old guide jumped up beaming and was soon gnawing away on the 'delicacy'. Mind you, she did carry a vacuum-packed duck's neck in her rucksack, in case of an emergency. On the rare occasions, usually breakfast, that she wasn't with us, we all ended up in McDonald's.

Queuing, as it is in many parts of the world, is an alien concept. But never have I seen so much barging, as people jostle for position. I'm ashamed to admit that after a month of being pushed from pillar to post, I lost my temper when someone attempted to eject me from a left-luggage queue – while I was being served at the counter. I finished my business, then flung the perpetrator to the ground. In England, I would have found myself in at least a slanging match (and probably a lot more). But the bloke accepted it graciously. It was as if he expected it – a case of 'live by the sword, die by the sword'.

I don't think I've ever been to a noisier country. More than 1.3 million people talking in a whisper would be loud enough. But everyone barks at the top of their voice – into their phones, to people standing next to them, into their lover's ear (I don't think you can whisper sweet nothings in Mandarin - Chinese whispers is something very different). It's as if they are all continuously having an argument. One lunchtime, a waitress rushed over to our table and bellowed a couple of sentences. We thought there must be a problem with the bill, until our guide told us that she had just come over to tell us it was raining.

Finally, and for many of us most alien, was the propensity of men to spit everywhere. And I mean everywhere – restaurants, train carriages and shops. And we're not talking a dainty spitting out of chewing gum – this was the hawking up of 'greenies' from the bottom of their lungs that would have put Kenny Everett's Sid Snot to shame.

But it wasn't only in the practices of the locals that China made an indelible impression on me. As someone who is lucky enough to have been to almost 60 countries, I often myself underwhelmed by sights that guidebooks eulogise about. However, the Great Wall (the West Bromwich Albion footballer who, during a tour of China in 1978, reputedly opted for a lie-in in preference to a visit to the architectural wonder, with the comment, 'seen one wall, seen them all', was misguided) and Terracotta Warriors certainly lived up to expectations. I even had the privilege to have met the only survivor of the three farmers who stumbled across the warriors' tombs while digging a well in 1974. In fact, his presence persuaded me to spend £10 on a signed guidebook (it will be worth a few quid on eBay one day) I would otherwise never have bought. The frail old man, who must be in his eighties, was taught to sign his name solely to wring a few extra yuan from tourists. The cynic in me couldn't help but wonder whether all three farmers had died years ago, and the man who signed my book was just the chosen extra that day from the Xi'an amateur dramatics society.

Experiencing a five-minute total eclipse in a perfectly clear sky, when almost everywhere else in the area was shrouded in cloud, while on the Yangste River was also unforgettable. I only wish that I had been able to make the journey up river before the Three Gorges Dam had been built, when the cliffs were several hundred feet taller and the valley far narrower.

On a more personal level, I taught myself to use chopsticks in two days (it was either that or go on a crash diet) on what was my fifth trip to Asia; won my name written in Chinese characters in a game of musical chairs; was part of a 'choir' that performed a Chinese love song on a ship's stage (it didn't win me anyone's heart – hardly surprisingly, as I am tone deaf); and learned to count to 100 in Chinese (don't ask me to write it, though, as there are more than 56,000 characters in the Chinese language – I pity their poor sub-editors).

The only downside was the recurrence of a serious eye problem (I almost lost sight in one eye in Peru eight years ago), which meant that I couldn't open it for the final two weeks of the trip. I thought my luck was in when we reached Xi'an and checked into a hotel that was a five-minute walk from an eye hospital. But the quality of the consultation left a lot to be desired (the door to the treatment room was open and a stream of people came in to ask to the specialist questions while he was examining me). My long-standing problem wasn't even picked up and I was diagnosed as having an 'eye infection'. I was prescribed three types of drops and cream, which I had to administer 15 times a day (not easy when you're hiking the Great Wall). But they only served to make the problem worse and it didn't start to heal until I threw them all away. As I said earlier, for a country developing at such a pace, the quality of healthcare was frightening.

All in all, it was a memorable trip in so many ways. But the size of the country (we did four train journeys of at least 18 hours), the heat and humidity, and the language barriers (at train stations you couldn't even read the departures board – it was little wonder that we encountered only four people travelling independently in the course of a month) meant that at no stage did I feel that I had China in my hand.