China; a country of contradictions. So says the guide book, although they say that for just about everywhere else, and will continue to do so until Lonely Planet Surrey comes out. Still, you can't write a travel article without referencing the pages you spent a quarter of the time peering at. The Book gets everywhere, informing your views more insidiously than communist propaganda.

For all that there is one glaring exception to the China country of contradictions theory: haircuts. There is a little less variation in the Chinese hairdo than in your average set of Lego men. Even in the great metropolis of Shanghai everyone has gone for the gender-neutral short back and sides without even thinking about a fancy bouffant. Men, women, school children and grandmothers, all sport an identical cap of black hair. Consequently the "Bird or Bloke" game is never tougher than on a Chinese High Street. Because the follicular homogeneity is only compounded by another received standard, dress sense. Little did Calvin Klein know, when he re-designed and marketed off-black suits, that the Chinese were already sporting similar charcoal numbers, even when on holiday or doing the gardening. The suits are unisex too, and feisty looking gals stride around in trouser suits looking like KGB operatives in a Bond film. Those not in suit uniforms are in actual uniforms, soldiers, sailors and military men everywhere.

Above the soldiers and the suits and the haircuts an imperial looking city is rising. Construction firms are falling over themselves to throw up odd shaped buildings. The most famous new building, the Pearl Tower, is nothing but globes: three globes of decreasing size, strung down a tower like dumbbells, the bottom one resting on a steel tripod. The city seems obsessed with the spherical. There are three possible reasons for this.

1) Shanghai was the Pearl of the Orient. Pearls are round. Therefore, lets build great big round buildings together.
2) It's a big city with big hopes, to be the international city it once was, to rival Hong Kong, to host Expo 2000. These spheres represent the globe and China's expanding place in it. Two of them, flanking a building in central Shanghai, are painted as the earth, with China coloured in red. This orb-obsessed architecture puts China on the map, literally.
3) These constructions are all Death Stars that will one day take off to police the solar system. The Pearl Tower is in fact an enormous laser beam gun disguised as a building. It will soon be capable of bouncing its deadly rays off satellites to scorch unfriendly nations.

Leaving the death stars and giant lasers behind us, we take a ferry out of Shanghai, across brown waters filled with rigs and tugs and ships, to the island of Putuoshan. According to the Lonely Planet, it is "the China that foreigners always dream of". Not perhaps the foreigners who watch Asian pornography before bedtime, more those who are into temples and pagodas.

The temples are loud and smoky. The Buddha was never more aggressively worshipped. Stand for a second at the entrance and you will be shouldered aside by suited pilgrims and KGB agents who perform their prostrations whether you are out of the way or not. It's an"Out of my way, pal", I have to meditate on the path to inner peace" kind of worship. It's fantastic. A monk has a look at our Lonely Planet guide book. He points at pictures and asks something. Referencing the mandarin vocab section every other syllable I manage my first mandarin sentence. "I don't understand." The monk laughs heartily at this, and encouraged, I continue, "Sorry". We shake hands, both exceedingly pleased with ourselves. Outside the crowds cluster around stone housed fires to light incense. In suits. It looks like a stock market has been relocated in a monastery. It's a country of contradictions. It's the China that, as a foreigner, I've always dreamed of.

As China opens up, joins the WTO and catapults itself through industrialisation the party has not been blind to the possibilities of tourism. Leaving Putuoshan there is a large sign advertising its history as a popular spot for the top men in the CPR. Many heroes of the working class - that's the Chinese name for politicians - have favoured the island with a visit. Zhou Enlai, Jiang Zemin, Deng Xhiaoping all came to the place foreigners were dreaming of, and subsequently took great interest in its development.

We navigate our way into the mainland with the help of complete strangers. At times China can seem a combative place. The stares are "Full-on, in-your-face, what-the-heck-are-you" stares. Not the embarrassed curiosity you get in Japan. Strangers don't say "Harro!" here. They shout it at you and then laugh at their cleverness. But at the same time people are so incredibly kind, going out of their way to help where they have nothing to gain. We get instruction on the cheapest bus across town. Two interior designers buy us dinner and then negotiate with touts to help us commandeer a night bus. An electrician buys us our tickets. Bus drivers worry about whether we have a place to stay and drive us around the cheapest hotels. Everywhere in China people showed us immense unconditional kindness. Everywhere that is, except Tankou.

Tankou is a little village at the foot of the spectacular Huang Shan mountain range. "You can really tell what generations of Chinese artists are on about" enthuses the Lonely Planet about this series of sheer granite peaks, rising like spires, pines clinging to their scraggy sides. Little Tankou is a village with an agenda, and that agenda is bagging tourists. Even Hong Kong-ites are instantly clocked according to their clothing, and mobbed. The moment we step off the bus we have an entourage of taxis, hotel owners, and souvenir sellers following us a few feet behind. Worst of the bunch is Mr Cheng, a travel operator and hotel owner who longs for nothing more in life than to show us "beautiful Jade Valley". Persistent, wheedling and worst of all, possessed of excellent English, Mr Cheng follows us through restaurants and taxis right to the foot of the mountain, telling us that any option apart from staying at his hotel is logistically impossible. Only when it becomes clear we are going up the mountain, come wind, rain, darkness, booked out hotels, and all the plagues afflicting poor foreigners, does he give up, and threatens to pick us up when we get back down.

The mountain has been installed with a giant stone stair case. Steps run all over the mountain, venturing up sheer cliffs, cutting through high passes, dropping through caves. Up and down charge tour groups in yellow hats following women with loudspeakers, while porters lug beer, vegetables and live chickens to the restaurants at the top. Good job we're not simply following a guide we think, as we admire the stony heights and really start to see what those Chinese artists are on about.

Half way up is an enormous billboard proclaiming that here Deng Xhiaoping stopped for a short break, above a picture of the great man, trousers rolled up to the knees, leaning on a stick. Historians believe the short break could have been anything up to twenty minutes, during which Deng probably stood on the left side of the track to let people pass and may even have relieved himself. At the top, on the Refreshing Terrace, Jiang Zemin enjoyed the view, before going to eat breakfast. We aren't allowed to sleep in dorm beds because we are foreigners, but staying positive, the clerk offers to sell us the entire dormitory for the night. We settled for a double room with a view of the hotel next door. The sunrise is spectacular, rising above the mist and smog to tint the tops of the peaks.

Back in Shanghai we stay on a university campus. Soya, from Osaka is doing a year here. Does he like it? Erm, not exactly. The city doesn't quite ooze courtesy and cleanliness but it's cheap. "The relationship between foreign students and Chinese is really bad" says Nadia from Switzerland. "They'll say they are going to eat there, and want to buy this CD and those clothes and you're like great, but what else?" Consumerism is fast and furious. Pepsi sponsors entire streets, and a Starbucks stands in People's Square. On buses and boats we watch Hong Kong films with titles like Marry a Rich Man. The military is visible everywhere, but performing administrative tasks; one lieutenant sold us ice creams. Everything seems free and easy, everyone bursts with confidence, but there is still a tension in the advertising billboards. "Give China this Honour" say the posters for Expo 2000, and she will reward the world with more riches. They seem to proffer a contract, to a world that does not always fulfill its side of the bargain. For all China's assertive internationalism there remains a touch of insecurity, a wounded pride. It really is a country of contradictions.