It’s a country, with an amazing history where culture, language, family, medicine, food, survival, fun, life and death are entwined in a unique package. Like Fallows, I have grown very fond of the Chinese. I like their feistiness, their strong sense of family, loyalty and honor. Relationships matter more to the Chinese than they seem to for us laowei. And in economic terms, the Chinese get things done. I saw a woman haranguing a policeman. I don’t know why, but she was really giving it to him. I felt some sympathy for the cop. The particularly odd thing was that he was carrying a sub-machine gun. It’s the little things you remember. A Beijing hospital has been raising money for breast cancer research, sending out the usual annoying commissiondriven fund raisers to touristy shopping malls, with apparently mixed success, until last week. Amid controversy, so China Daily reported, the hospital hired several six-foot-tall bikini-clad models to brave Beijing’s Autumn.

They made a motza. Memo To Self: tell Mavis and Fiona about this for next year’s Mother’s Day Classic. A pretty girl in a local grocery shop I frequent asked me on a date. I had to beg her pardon – clearly something was lost in translation here. No, she said let’s go out on a date. I can’t remember the last time that happened, possibly never. Mumbling about my wife and grandchildren, I made a hasty exit. Another note to self: better find a new grocery shop. I was tempted to think something like: Brighty, you’ve still got what it takes. But on reflection I had to admit China is still a poor country. The United Nations is 10 years into a 15-year plan to reduce world poverty. In that 10 years China has reduced its level of poverty from 36 per cent to 16 per cent of the population, lowering it to second place behind India in absolute terms. The UN defines poverty as living on less than US$1.25 a day after adjusting for purchasing power parity.

With clean air and blue skies, no doubt. And admittedly my observations to date come from only three sources: my observations, my translator Sophie and Englishlanguage Chinese newspapers. But many things strike us laowai (foreigners) almost upon arrival. There are the tourist-type things such as: NO-ONE speaks English. The taxi drivers seem to struggle with Chinese. None has a Mandarin Beijing Gregory’s street directory let alone a Tom Tom. And there are the signs of great wealth, alongside poverty and desperation. From an investment point of view, it is clear China is entering a phase of slower economic growth. At the same time, it is paying the ‘price’ of its success during the past couple of decades. Workers have been striking, at least at Westernowned companies, and even in the government-owned press, concerns are expressed about the environment and the increasing gap between rich and poor.

In the China Daily, an Englishlanguage paper owned by the People’s Republic, there is a report that the gap in average income between the top and bottom quartiles is the widest it has been for 10 years. There are columns railing against the destruction/ redevelopment of the historic Hutong in Beijing (alleyways with courtyard houses) and about the ever-rising pollution and traffic congestion. Perhaps Sophie’s story is more demonstrative. Sophie, 23, is a student at the Peking University. She is from the Hunan province, which boasts the spiciest food in China. She has a 21-year-old sister who lives at home with her mother and father. Sophie has a bed, desk and locker in a four-person room at the uni and travels for about an hour on bus and train to go to and from her temporary work with me as a translator. Her sister sounds like a bit of a handful. She wants to get a tattoo – rare in China, even among young people.

Other economic records for the world’s fastest growing economy include these August year-on-year numbers: industrial output up 13.9 per cent, retail sales up 18.4 per cent and fixed asset investment up 24.8 per cent. The total trade surplus slipped as imports continued to increase to satisfy China’s expanding domestic demand, but was still the world’s biggest at US$20 billion for the month. Economists who question the credibility of some of China’s numbers like to look at power consumption as a better proxy for growth. This was up 14.7 per cent. All this was achieved with inflation being held to 3.5 per cent annualised.

Hmm, that number is little more difficult to believe, although it does fit with predicted inflation ranges from western analysts such as those at HSBC and Goldman. Some in China, though, think that their world records are not always given the credit that they are due. So they have started the China World Record Association, which not only better promotes the records that have been recognised but also comes up with whole new categories for competition. This was formed after the Beijing Olympics, when there was an outcry over refusal to agree that the Chinese torch-carrying before the opening ceremony was indeed the longest ever. Apparently, the drunken Irishmen in charge of the Guinness Book of Records disqualified China on a technicality.

The Shanghai World Expo, which is still underway, with record crowds, it should be noted, has produced several, including the largest-ever LED display, which covers 500 sq m with pixels reaching 13.8 million, making it the number one monomer high-density LED in the world. But the China World Record Association, as an egalitarian body, has recognised several other records recently which would undoubtedly go unnoticed if not for the association’s hard work. There are, for instance: the world’s smallest working slingshot; the world’s largest gourd made of rice paper; the world’s longest banquet, which sat people down at a 2,272-metre table to eat food from the “autonomous County” of Wa in the Yunnan province; and one which is difficult describe – a simulated dead tree with more miniature ant models than any other simulated dead tree. Actually the last one was quite a feat.