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Travelling in China - Beijing

Peter on the Great Wall of China, Badaling, near Beijing

Flew Air China non-stop, London Heathrow-Beijing. It took just 9 hours 30 minutes, less than flying to Miami. Economy class, but surprisingly acceptable and more legroom than many western airlines. We landed in fog so thick you could hardly see the airport perimeter. Driving into the city was a little disappointing as the fog obscured much of the view. It seems everywhere I go I take the weather with me.

Before arriving I had visions of the Beijing of old, with cycles everywhere. That wasn’t quite the case, as the roads were full of as much traffic as any major city. But there certainly were a lot of cyclists, especially in the early mornings and in the afternoon rush-hour, with everyone from students rushing back home in their uniforms to teachers and office workers holding books and briefcases. One man had a small child sat in front of him, barely able to reach the handlebars but clinging on for dear life. A schoolgirl was even trying to do her homework sitting on the luggage rack of a bike and using the rider's back as a rest to write on.  London could learn a thing or two from Beijing – the cyclists have their own partitioned lanes on major roads.

Tiananmen Gate at nightForbidden CityDragon relief on wall, Bei Hai Park

One of the first things I did was take a cab to the city centre and walk to Tiananmen Square. The wide streets and modern hotel buildings, shopping centres and office buildings were a revelation. I suppose like most visitors I associate the city with its history, so to see these grand and elegant buildings has opened my eyes to what the Beijing of today really is. Not a city locked in the past but one which has embraced its new role as an international metropolis and commercial hub. To see Tiananmen Square for the first time is quite something, especially at night. Chairman Mao's portrait stands guard above Tiananmen Gate, and everyone wants their photograph taken underneath it.

For my first meal in China I am taken to a local restaurant and invited to try several dishes which turn out to be ducks' webbed feet in ginger, ducks' tongues and jellyfish. I have a nasty feeling this is just a taste of what's to come for me.

After fog and rain for four days, in which I am filmed in my room and outside looking up wistfully at the sky, filming starts in earnest. We go to Panjiayuang secondhand and antiques market.

 Tai chi class, Bei Hai Park

For this first assignment they wire me up with a radio mike, clipping the microphone to my collar and the transmitter to my belt.  It felt very strange at first, especially when they asked me to do a sound check while I was some distance from them and got the thumbs up that they could hear me perfectly. I felt like a secret agent, or maybe even Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible – except taller and without his looks. I would get to know this piece of kit very well over the next few weeks and months, however odd it felt now. I would also get used to having a big video camera following me throughout my travels, often attracting crowds of fascinated onlookers wondering what we were doing. I then had to do my first-ever piece to camera, with the camera mounted on a balcony and me walking through the market towards it and introducing where we were. It was very nerve-racking but I get through it, after seven takes!

Off to the Forbidden City on day six. Its name is fitting - we are forbidden to take the big video camera in, but luckily a smaller one is allowed in and we film several scenes and me doing introductions to camera, clad in leather hat. I get asked to be photographed by a couple of groups of Chinese visitors who see the camera filming me. They obviously mistake me for a film star.

Qinian Hall, Temple of Heaven

I watch the early morning exercises and dance classes by locals in Bei Hai Park, then get invited to join a tai chi class. It all looked so serene when other people were doing it, but the instructor is quite complimentary about my efforts. For lunch I am invited to the home of a school friend of my interpreter in a Beijing hutong, the old neighbourhoods which once covered the city. I have to help make traditional dumplings on camera. The house consists of just three rooms - a basic and tiny kitchen, a main bedroom-cum-living room and a second bedroom Four people live together in the house, and to wash or use the toilet or bathroom they must walk about 50 paces up a narrow alleyway past other homes to reach the communal facilities. How they manage in the depths of a Beijing winter is beyond me, especially with the only source of heat a single stove burning coal dust bricks. My pathetic dumplings cause amusement, but at least they taste the same as the others. Later that day I join a Saga group on a pedicab tour of other hutongs and interview a couple of British holidaymakers.

Peter being filmed getting a tai chi lesson

I visit a couple of less obvious attractions in Beijing - a deer park set up to protect China's endangered Milu deer, once a symbol of China's imperial dynasties, and an artists' colony in a factory in the Dashanzi suburb which is set to become Beijing's equivalent to New York's Greenwich Village. I also visit the circular Qinian Hall, otherwise known as the Temple of Heaven and copied by Disney at its Epcot Centre park in Florida. Give me the original any day.

But no visit to Beijing is complete with seeing the Great Wall. The section closest to the city is at Badaling and is very touristy, with a cable car taking visitors to the top of the mountain which the wall crests and souvenir stalls everywhere. There are also crowds of people clambering up and down the surprisingly-steep ramparts. But although largely a reconstruction in this area, the wall is a stirring sight. I can't get over how it marches from one horizon to the other across some of the most unimaginably hostile landscape. No wonder it took hundreds of years to complete. I manage to remember a quote from Chairman Mao in Chinese long enough to be able to recite it to camera. It translates as: "You are not a hero until you step on the Great Wall."

Crowds on the Great Wall at Badaling

That evening I am filmed having a relaxing dip in a whirlpool spa bath followed by a foot massage and full body massage. Sadly it was all over in the time it took to film - less than 10 minutes. I never did get the full treatment. I am also filmed having tea at the hotel, having breakfast the following morning and writing emails in my room. I'm sure people will get fed up of seeing that much of me.

For the final day of filming in Beijing we go to Tiananmen Square to watch the flag-lowering ceremony at sunset. I also borrow a kite from a Chinese family to try flying it myself, and they give it to me to keep. Except that the producer seems to have hung on to it. But the sting in the tail comes later when we go to Beijing's glitzy shopping street, Wanfujing Street, and I try fried scorpion and fried silkworm on skewers - for the sake of the camera. To my horror I discover afterwards that the scorpions were still alive on the skewers. If I had known that at the time I would never have had them. I declined offers by the stallholders to try snake, seahorse or grasshopper. A couple of days earlier I had also given a wide berth to stalls in another market offering fried goats' testicles, goat's head and dog meat.

Next stop: Guilin.