THE TIMES, THEY ARE A CHANGIN' (Kunming University Hotel)

KATHRYN DESCRIBES China as 'a piecemeal process of continuous construction'. I think that summarises the variety of buildings and endless construction sites quite well. We saw some old Cultural revolution era buildings that were part of this process. Like the institutions from that era, they were being taken apart brick by brick.

In Shanghai anything involving milk was a poor replica of the Western equivalent - back in 2000. My coffee then tasted as though it were made of powdered milk. Now fruit smoothies and lavazza are easy to get.

Back in 2000 the only bikes were motorbikes and bicycles. Today, electric mopeds are common - humming by like a vehicle out of Star Wars.

The internet cafes have changed too, in 2000 they were filled with smoking male teenagers and 20somethings on internet chat and warcraft. The internet cafes today sport computers equipped with webcams. The male teenagers are still there - having moved onto counterstrike. What was different was the number of girls - fully made up and dressed in pretty frocks, who would log on, flip up a chat window + webcam window and sit there chatting to their boyfriend and other girlfriends.