Travel: A long day on the capitalist road: John Torode grabs the chance of a day trip to the new China, as its relations with Britain deteriorate

It is 50 minutes by hovercraft from Hong Kong to the scruffy Chinese city of Shekou. A fishing village only 10 years ago, it is now the entrepot for the first of 11 booming free-market 'special economic zones' established by the People's Republic.

From the colony's international airport-style ferry terminal, the ferries blast up the Pearl River and across Shenzen Bay, serving a breakfast of pot noodles and Hong Kong beer. In the misty, early morning sunlight, the coastline of Hong Kong's New Territories is reminiscent of the industry-ravaged but still beautiful coastline around the Greek port of Piraeus.

Shekou's dingy customs hall is described, in best Communist jargon, as the 'Visa Office of the Public Security Bureau of the Guangdong Province'. There, you queue in single file, according to previously issued numbers, awaiting passport inspection and often lengthy interrogation by cold-faced female security officers.

The Chinese-Canadian couple and the assorted African-Americans in our 45-strong group attracted particular attention. But the Jewish couple from Johannesburg got in without a problem, although South African passports - along with those of Israel, South Korea and the Vatican - are supposedly not acceptable. It took the best part of an hour for Harry, our Hong Kong-based guide and keeper of the collective visa, to negotiate entry. Welcome to the People's Republic of China.

At passport control, Harry handed us over to his mainland counterpart, Albert. 'Born here,' Harry said of him, 'raised here, brainwashed here.' In fact, Albert's staccato subversion was breathtaking. It would not have been tolerated five or six years ago in any Warsaw Pact country.

'Unfortunately,' he said by way of introduction, soon after we boarded the coach, 'in 1949 China became a Communist country. This is why we are so far behind.'

In the course of his comments over the coach's loudspeaker system, Albert was to vilify and ridicule Chairman Mao - and to tell us that the country was still ruled by despotic emperors. Nothing would change until they died, he announced. Some earnest soul asked if people regretted the abandonment of collective farming a decade ago. 'Do you known how many peasants Mao murdered to introduce collectives?' Albert demanded. 'Do you? Twenty million, that's how many. Good score, eh?'

Shekou, a fast-growing port and industrial centre, was fascinating. But I did not much like it. In particular, I felt uneasy when we were crowded into the hall of No 1 Kindergarten, Shekou Industrial District, to watch beautifully dressed and stunningly pretty four-year-olds play the piano and sing 'Old MacDonald' and other Western nursery rhymes in lisping, accented English. They performed a dragon dance and then rushed into the crowd to hug and kiss middle-aged ladies and to pull them on to the floor to dance 'ring-o'-roses'. It was all too good to be true. The school was simply too well equipped and the youngsters were too well rehearsed. In fact, the next coachload of tourists was already pulling up as we drove out of the school gates. I felt like one of those gullible tourists who used to visit Comrade Stalin's Russia, or a delegate to some more recent beanfeast that was held to honour Romania's Great Leader, Nicolae Ceausescu.

Later, next door to the city museum, I noticed a new executive estate, about a dozen detached houses on a short, winding lane. A sign in English and Chinese read 'Private'. As I started to walk down the lane, two soldiers from the People's Liberation Army appeared from nowhere, grabbed my wrists and marched me back to the museum and to Albert, who was not amused.

As for the museum, it is worth visiting, but only if you have never seen the 9,000 terracotta warriors unearthed at Xian, in Shaanxi Province, 1,000 miles to the north. A handful are on display, ripped from their archaeological context, to provide a convenient tourist attraction on the border with Hong Kong.

It is 193 kilometres from Shekou to Guangzhou (formerly Canton), the provincial capital. The journey takes almost five hours, including a stop for a lunchtime banquet in the provincial town of Dongguan.

We travelled over unfinished roads jammed with buses and heavy lorries, across what seemed to be one continuous building site.

The chaotic explosion of energy is not the result of socialist planning, but capitalism run riot, with skyscrapers, hotels and factories, cheek by jowl with those paddy fields and duck farms not yet flogged off to the developers. Massive riverside power stations, old-fashioned coal-burning jobs, pump pollution into the water, just yards from the homes of boat-dwellers and fisherfolk.

Roadside billboards advertise housing developments, rather than the thoughts of Chairman Mao. I liked the sound of 'Great, All-China, Hollywood, Golf Club Executive Estate', and wondered who would live there. The answer, according to Albert, is that rich Hong Kong Chinese, who cannot get their relatives out of the country, set them up in style in such places and commute weekly to see them.

Guangzhou is a vibrant, though heavily polluted, subtropical city with a 2,000-year history and a population of almost four million. It was the headquarters of Kuomingtang leader Sun Yat-sen, president of China following the revolution of 1911. He is the object of the local cult of personality. Visitors to the elegant, blue-tiled, octagonal Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall are expected to buy - and wear - Sun Yat-sen badges.

Guangzhou's bustling Six Banyan Temple is a Buddhist complex dominated by the great 10-storey Flower Pagoda in the heart of the old city. There was a pleasingly casual atmosphere about the Chinese at their devotions, and a polite indifference to gawping tourists. Old people sat on the altar steps, smoking steadily.

Young women prayed - giggling and nudging each other - before the so-called Fat Buddha statue, which can supposedly cure sterility. A smartly dressed executive type, briefcase in hand, rocked back and forth before a 20ft-long painted wooden fish, a symbol of good luck which is often approached to bless business ventures. Hustlers peddled their objects of veneration.

From the temple it is an easy stroll to the street market, where you will see such distressing sights - outlawed, at least in theory, in Hong Kong - as live cats, dogs and snakes for eating, crammed into small cages, and large fish jammed into plastic buckets. These are sliced open, alive, for customers who like to see the beating heart and twitching flesh before buying. Bundles of live golden pheasants hang tied together by their feet awaiting execution.

Albert insisted we visit Guangzhou's run-down zoo to see the panda. The poor beast is stuck in a narrow concrete and iron cage, and looks thoroughly miserable. Other 'attractions' included dancing dogs and performing animals, and theme park rides past plastic monsters.

From there we moved to the massive international station to catch the through train back to Hong Kong. The crowds were overwhelming, and the more faint- hearted among our number were further distressed by the leprous beggars who thrust their deformed stumps into our faces, although they were far less piteous than the beggars which can be seen on Indian railway stations.

The train was clean, efficient and uncrowded. On board, the Chinese beer was excellent, the noodles appalling, and the three-hour journey uneventful, except that the toilets were locked cermonially shortly before the border city, Shenzhen, in case potential escapees attempted to hide in them. They were not unlocked until we reached the bright lights of Hong Kong's Kowloon station an hour later.

Oh, yes. The Hong Kong customs and border guards at the station were as arrogant and time-consuming as their counterparts in Shekou.

FACTFILE

Getting there: John Torode used Splendid Tours and Travel (telephone: Hong Kong 316 2151; fax: 312 2031). He took tour SKG (to Shekou and Guangzhou). The trip lasts at least 14 hours, costs HKdollars 1,060 ( pounds 92) plus Hkdollars 100 for a map, postcards and souvenir stamps and currency. Payment must be made two days in advance and a passport produced when booking. The date of travel cannot be changed and payments are non- refundable.

Package tour: This is one of the rare places where it is better to pick a commercially packaged day trips. (They include meals: a lunch-time 'banquet' and an often desultory afternoon tea ceremony.) Tours can be booked in the lobby of any major Hong Kong hotel. You travel on a group visa, and must carry your passport with you at all times.

The tour operators pick you up from your hotel early in the morning and return you, dog-tired, late in the evening. Their aim is to jam as much as possible into a grinding 14-hour day, and also as many opportunities as they can find to part you from your hard currency (usually these are provided by tacky and unimaginative souvenir shops).

Do not be seduced by the number of visits to museums, duck farms, zoos, temples, industrial areas, kindergartens, silk factories and the like. Plump for the longest day on offer and book a visit which involves a long coach journey as well as train and hovercraft trips - and which advertises 'free time for shopping or taking snack'. It is surprising how much you can see if you keep your eyes open and wander off whenever possible.

Visas: China makes foreigners wait a week or more for individual visa applications to be processed. Unless you speak good Cantonese or have friends who know China to act as guides, a quick individual visit is unlikely to be productive. The country is too big and too confusing to cope with alone.

(Photographs omitted)