Still off-limits: Why I can’t wait to get back to China

It started with a teapot. But, as Alex Robinson found out, there was so much more to taste in China’s most remote reaches

Taihu Lake in Suzhou, China (Getty/iStock)

We’ve all done it: whiled away time with aimless googling. In my case, I’d been searching for antique teapots. Don’t ask me why. But a few desultory clicks had brought me to a simply-sculpted clay number – and a big surprise.

A million quid. For a teapot? You’ve got to be kidding. But this spout-focused rabbit hole was how I ended up discovering the city of Yixing – and taking a trip to a corner of China that defied my expectations.

I like to take chances. I’d never heard of Yixing or Jiangsu Province, where it lies. I knew little of China beyond the stereotypes, our interpretation of the food and what was on the news. I certainly didn’t expect a warm welcome, nor to find such a bewildering mix of ancient culture and glittering modernity; I thought China was all factories and smoking chimneys. Tradition had been destroyed in the name of proletarian progress, hadn’t it? Wasn’t that what happened in the Cultural Revolution?