The Forbidden City is, today, crowded with tour groups and tourists - European, Japanese and Chinese. Outside, hawkers try to sell everything from postcards to some wonderful Mao kitsch. A particular favourite is the Mao lighter that plays the opening bar of The East Is Red when lit.
The slogans of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, of the "Follow the example of our Great Helmsman" variety have been transformed along with much of China itself. Near one of the gates of the Forbidden City in Beijing, people are exhorted to "Value the cultural heritage of our ancestors, shoulder the historic mission of conserving their relics".
Another sign proclaims: "The more care you give, the more glory the palace museum will have."
A mere 30 years ago or less such sentiments would have been denounced by Red Guards as encouraging feudal ancestor worship, or worse. Whoever was responsible would surely have been the subject of a self-criticism session and possibly re-education.
Tourism is big business in the new market-driven China, and tourists are shipped in and out with remarkable efficiency. The Winter Place, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square are filled with young Chinese holding up flags to identify their groups and round up foreigners like sheepdogs. "Follow my flag. Keep together," they yell.
Not even modern tourism and the gross commercialism that sometimes goes with it can take from the beauty of the scenery, the friendliness of the people and the magic of the country. The Great Wall, for instance, is breathtaking, and not even the tacky commercialism of the nearest town, Badaling, can undermine that. The most accessible section of the wall is the bit Western politicians stand on for a photo opportunity. It is also as far as most tourists go. Walk only a kilometre and you can be quite alone, enjoy some of the most wonderful scenery, feel both the immensity of the achievement and the size of the country.
The wall goes up and down, following the contours of the steeply undulating mountains. You pant and puff up steep steps and slopes and walk, crab-like, down narrow steps that seem designed for small, bound feet rather than vulgar European size 10s. At the end of the renovated bit the wall becomes a ruin, and looks more interesting for that. The public is not meant to go any further. When it is hot and humid it is hardly a surprise that few others venture only a few metres to be photographed.
The impression most first-time visitors to China get is of Beijing, and it is not always a good one. Pollution often gives the impression of a permanent fog. The heavy traffic crawls along the ring roads. The Hutongs, a labyrinth of ancient alleyways, gives some impression of what Beijing was like before the city became the victim of town planners in the 1950s. These alleys give an indication of the Chinese love of walls.
The Great Wall protected China itself. The various court yards and walls of the Forbidden City protected the Emperor and the walls surrounding the courtyards of the Hutongs protected ordinary Chinese. The few Hutongs left are now a tourist attraction.
Much of China seems familiar. We know what the Great Wall looks like. A few of the Terracotta Warriors have even travelled to Dublin. Like the Great Wall, the reality of the Terracotta Warriors is very different. They stand in the original pits - a simple, hangar-like structure covers the whole site now - each one with a different face.
It is as if they represented real people with personalities and humour. Some pits have been uncovered and the soldiers left in the broken state in which they were found. Other sites have been left covered for later generations to excavate. The thousands who built them were all killed by the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, in order to keep his massive tomb, still un-excavated two kilometres to the west, which the soldiers guard, a secret. It was an exercise in sheer power, of life and death. It would not be the last time that thousands of Chinese would die on the orders of one man.
Travelling in China is about much more than seeing palaces, temples, beautiful gardens with willows dripping into the lily-covered lakes, pagodas and monuments. The west has long been fascinated by China and still is. For most visitors China is a country that is at once both familiar and exotic and a country that many are predicting will be the power-house of the next century.
China often seems to be moving ahead while standing still. Works by Mao and Deng are on sale in western-style hotels, in train stations and airports. Beside them are manuals from the Harvard Business School, or course books for MBA students.
People eat noodles from street stands in the shadow of modern sky-scrapers. Rickshaws are overtaken by BMWs while at the old Cathay Hotel in Shanghai, now called the Peace Hotel, a jazz band plays nightly. Its elderly musicians have been playing there since the 1920s. Outside the train stations are groups of men sitting on their heels. Unable to make a living in the countryside, they now provide a cheap casual labour pool. In the silk factories where tourists visit to see silk being spun, and buy goods, the workers are earning about £40 a month. Below a billboard advertising the latest computer technology is a man mending bicycles at his street side workshop using the most primitive pedal-powered equipment; outside the Forbidden City is a street where barbers shave and give haircuts under the plane trees.
In the beautiful city of Suzhou a boat takes visitors along one of the canals that earned the city the name " Venice of the East". You see grinding poverty and traditional canal-side houses with turned-up Chinese roofs one minute, and yuppie apartments and canal-side bars the next.
Travelling in China is an intense experience. The country is changing fast. A mere 30 years ago everyone wore the same uniform and Red Guards waved Mao's little red book, which can now be bought in tourist shops. Mao Zedong is still an inspiration, but made serious mistakes in his later life, you will be told. His portrait still dominates Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but the McDonalds is nearby.
The particular tour we were on, Imperial China, started with the Forbidden City and ended in Nanjing at the mausoleum of Dr Sun Yatsen, the founder of the Chinese Republic in 1911. It could at times be exhausting and escaping from the tour every so often is essential to maintain one's sanity. On the plus side it must be said that it is difficult to imagine taking in so much without such a tour, from the Summer Palace of the Empress Dowager Cixi, the Yangtze, Buddhist temples, museums, tours of the Hutongs, the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors. We travelled by boats, trains and aircraft, we were shown both the old and the new China. Our guide, Min Li, was delighted to talk to us about any aspect of Chinese life, from the education system, the one-child policy, the place of Mao, the Cultural revolution, the market economy as well as imperial China. Nothing was too great or trivial for Min Li. She even tried to teach us some Mandarin.