A Shanghai street scene. The volume of construction in the city is staggering, much of it obliterating traditional neighbourhoods. Vast amounts of government money and foreign investment are fuelling Shanghai's bid to reclaim from Hong Kong the title of China's "window on the world." Who will manage this growth? Currently, there are 26,000 openings for bureaucrats in Shanghai.

More than 100 towns and villages will shortly be "drowned" by the Three Gorges Dam project. Fengdu, the "Ghost City," looked like Ground Zero. Whole new cities are perched high on the hillsides. As the waters rise, what will happen to the banks of garbage that line the river, the piles of coal in abandoned factories? The farmland to be flooded is some of the most fertile in China.

In the Yellow Mountains, a 72-peak cluster reached by road, cable car and foot, a hilarious pre-dinner hour is spent in our hotel bar savouring Eight Treasure Tea, served by a red-costumed waiter who, from five feet away, arcs boiling water from a brass pot with a metre-long spout over nervous laps into tiny cups without spilling a drop. Every item of food and comfort is carried to the 1,500-metre-high hotel by coolies, 100 kilos at a time, during a four-hour trip. Human labour is cheaper than the cost of running the gondola. The average working career for a coolie is two to three years.

Shipping locks under construction at the Three Gorges Dam. Freighters up to 10,000 tons will be able to sail 2,400 km (1,500 miles) inland for six months of each year, opening a region whose capital city, Chongqing, has a population roughly equal to Canada's.

The bird market in Hong Kong. Apart from the ubiquitous Eurasian tree sparrow and three species of magpie, the scarcity of bird life in China was astonishing. Pollution is a factor, but the main culprit was the sanctioned persecution during the Cultural Revolution, when millions were killed in the mistaken conviction that birds compete with humans for food.

At our very first tourist stop, the Heavenly Temple in Beijing, seething humanity parted to make way for three elderly women with bound feet. Welcome to China.

A Buddhist monk replenishes candles at the Great Wild Goose Pagoda near the city of Xian.

Our tour group was divided into two busloads, making everything manageable without eroding the sense of bonding. The day's activities and impressions were shared at communal meals served at circular tables with giant lazy susans covered with a dozen or more steaming dishes handsomely presented. We all looked forward to our nights at the round table.