Leaving England was as you would expect, last min rush to pack and do all the little things that disorganised people like me always leave to the last min, small stuff like changing currency and checking to see if London's superb underground system (the oldest in the world don't ya know) was going to play ball and get me too terminal 4 or not. It did!

Breaking bags and daylight robbery aside, the moments before I passed through security were as Hollywood and any in real life, full of tearful good byes with my girlfriend, the space between us of a few meters becoming the micro-cosm of our distance for the next year. All very sad.

Shortly after boarding the plane I made my first mistake. I let slip my small amount of Chinese to offer to swap seats with a man who had been split from his group by my allocated seat. It turned out he was part of a much bigger group of about 26 Chinese, returning from England after a 12 day tour. Before I knew it I was the centre of attention and wonder, getting questions along the lines of 'do you like Chinese food,' 'how can you speak Chinese,' 'can you use chopsticks,' and whether I would help one of the younger passengers with his A-level physics. Resoundingly NO! I haven't done physics since I was 15...Im now 23!

It was my good fortune that Ding Tianli's (Terry if you prefer) English was MUCH better than my Chinese and we happily whiled away the long flight. I learned a lot from Terry and with an invitation from both himself and his mother; I plan to visit them in their home village Wuxi before the year is out.

Before long I got my first sight of China, then Shanghai. To be honest it was nothing but the outline of skyscrapers in the distance, shimmering in the smog, but none the less, I had made it, this was China!