I've had quite a few people asking me about my recent (December 1994) experiences in China. Apologies to anyone who isn't interested, but please permit me to have my say.

Everyone was very friendly, people couldn't have made me more welcome. Staying in Fuzhou, a large coastal industrial town on the south eastern coastline, its the capital of the Fujian province and overlooks Taiwan. Due to its coastal proximity, we had a lot of seafood and shellfish to eat.

The first thing that struck me about eating in China was how much there was at each meal. The table would be laid out with the starters and about at five minutes intervals, another main course was brought out. Often, the main course consisted of a dozen dishes, no course was cleared away until the plate was empty. It was possible to eat the starters alongside the dessert. Among the things I ate for the first time were shark, snake, toad (at the time I thought it was the most tender chicken I had ever eaten, I learnt later it was toad), fox and pigeon. Nothing tasted foul, the snake tasted rather bland (and full of small bones) but that was the only thing I could say against any of the dishes I sampled.

I suffered a couple of bouts of upset stomach. I think the sausages I had for Christmas Day breakfast triggered the first bout. The diarrhoea quickly went, the temperature stayed high. You were probably watching City put 4 goals past Blackpool as I spent 4 hours on Boxing Day afternoon on a hospital drip. I was the only patient on the foreigners ward and the centre of attention as everyone wanted to see the westerner. My mother in law knew best and I couldn't speak the lingo to argue with her. The second bout was caused by The American Beef Noodle Company's beef noodles.

In Fuzhou, I only saw a handful of westerners in the 3 weeks I was there. And they were in the hotels that cater for western visitors. Very few people spoke English. A trip up to the next province revealed slightly more English speakers, at least among those involved in the tourist trade. They could say, "Mister, over here" and "please take my boat". In 5 days, the only westerner we saw was in the local Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The locals were very welcoming, many eager to try out their 2 words of English, "Hello Mister", pronounced much better than my limited Mandarin.

My wife, Yue said that she had no recollection of seeing a westerner in the flesh until she was 18, ten years ago. I'm sure when we were out, when many people saw me, I was the first westerner that they had ever seen.

I was staying in a household which didn't watch much televised sport. There was maybe six or eight hours of Asian and European soccer on TV every week, including a live Italian game and English highlights. They showed much American sport. Other TV consisted of mainly costumed drama, awful comedy (I could tell without understanding the language), karaoke and quiz shows.

I saw very few newspapers, it wasn't until my last week in China that I saw an English language paper. It was a 12 page broadsheet, one page of sport which included all the English results and brief reports and news coverage. Chinese news seemed to consist of booming towns and industrial regions and vast numbers of foreign companies investing in joint ventures.

Every where I went, new buildings and roads were being constructed, it was a very labour intensive operation, very few machines were evident. One horrendous car journey involved a 150 kilometre drive up a single track road to a mountain top resort. All the way up the mountain, extensive re-construction of the road was underway. In one spot, we were stationery for 90 minutes as a broken down car was pushed off the road. Roadside shacks had been pulled down and new houses built back from the road to allow it to be widened.

Private cars are still very restricted. In the cities, I counted 75% of the cars on the roads were taxis. A fleet of red Ladas provided the taxi fleet. Bicycles were king of the road, with their own congested cycle lanes on all roads, I often thought if one fell, the domino effect would take about 200 others off their bikes.

I bet you're wondering how we drove up the mountain when the usage of private cars is prohibited. We were chauffeur driven. My father in law was head of the province's state controlled publishing company before he retired and he was able to call upon a chauffeur driven company car. His position came in very useful, at times a flash of his "business / identity" card smoothed the way and opened doors that I'm sure would have remained shut otherwise. It also came in useful when one tour guide tried to fleece us by charging the group tour fee as an individual charge for each of the party. One flash of the idebntify card and we got the group rate and a very apologetic tour guide.

On my travels I only saw one large sporting facility. That was a swimming pool that had been built 30 years ago as part of the mansion that was the home of Ling Biao a former close friend of Mao who was killed fleeing in a plane after a bungled assassination attempt on Mao in 1974. The pool has stood empty ever since. Today, the elite athletes are housed in remote training camps. It appears that there are few sporting facilities for the masses.

Our football clubs could learn from China. Many urinals had deep trenches dug into the ground, which would have alleviated many of the problems football supporters have experienced in England. Something else that football supporters experience in England is prevalent in China. That is charging away supporters higher admission than the home supporters. Travel, accommodation and admission to tourist spots was invariably more dearer for me than Yue. Hotels and travel would typically charge a 25% surcharge. £5 instead of £1 was the most extreme example. £5 for a 2 day pass to the local beauty spot was still a real bargain.

Prices were generally much cheaper than Britain. The lowest value note in circulation was worth one penny. I saw coins worth one twentieth of a penny.

On my return from China, I read about a new national Chinese soccer league. The Marlboro cigarette sponsored national consists of 12 teams. Foreign stars have been imported, including 3 Englishmen. Most people will of heard of none of them. I'd heard of one. Darren Tilley.

More China in issue 19 (2010) and issue 25 (2015).