Letter from Songpan: The shrewd hotel-owner with impeccable English rushed over to the bus which had just pulled in from the Chinese city of Chengdu to the remote mountain town Songpan.
"It's no use to you here, throw it away, everything has changed, all the hotels are closed," he told the foreigners clutching the latest edition of the guide book Lonely Planet.
Naturally we ignored him, assuming it was a ploy to get us to part with our yuan for an over- priced hovel in a damp hotel. But a quick walk down the main street in Songpan proved that he was right. Parts of the map in the Lonely Planet bore no resemblance to reality; hotels and restaurants marked down were gone; others existed no longer operated as hotels but now housed local families; "spotlessly clean rooms at a cheap rate" as described in the guide book proved to be dusty rooms with stained sheets and no hot water at all.
The transformation Songpan had undergone in the two years since the Lonely Planet was published didn't just stop at its hotels and restaurants. Entire streets of this town where people come to go horse-trekking into the surrounding scenic mountains were pulled up with manholes dangerously left open.
The ancient city gates and walls were covered with iron scaffolding and workers restoring the façade. A trip to a small shop to buy some bottled water or biscuits involved the shop assistant apologetically wiping off the layer of thick grey dust. Tibetans selling jewellery and yak-skin coats tried their best to keep the dust of their souvenirs. Diggers and lorries with cement roared up and down the narrow main street almost colliding with the tour buses.
Songpan's building frenzy and drive to transform itself is an extreme example of what is happening in the rest of China. Beijing is gearing up for the 2008 Olympics and is building the necessary facilities, including new subway lines, while making the city look prettier and greener for the games. Shanghai has already transformed itself with a clutter of high-rises that seem to rival Manhattan but the building continues. Lorries line up outside construction sites at night to drop off their loads during the quieter hours for traffic and green scaffolding covers many sites which will soon stand tall among the other buildings.
If you happened to be unlucky enough to book a room in a hotel with building going on next door, you may find yourself staying up with the workers who keep going well into the night and are back again first thing in the morning.
The speed of the transformation is staggering. A building in Chengdu when I arrived looked like it had a good bit to go before its doors would open to customers, but two days later trendy young couples were browsing around the new furniture shop choosing chic western ware for their homes.
Indeed Chengdu bears a remarkable symbol of what is happening in modern China. A huge white statue of the father of Chinese communism, Mao Zedong, in the main square stands surrounded by a blue façade with construction taking place behind it. Much like communism in China today, if you didn't look for Mao's statue you would easily miss it.
Chengdu, like other big Chinese cities, has an array of designer shops - which are mostly empty - and western fast- food chains. Shop assistants stand outside bargain clothes shop and shout the latest cut- down prices to passers-by.
But while the changes in China point to the increase in foreign investment and the fact that many people are getting richer, it is obvious that not all sectors of society have been touched by wealth. As the bus weaved through small villages on the way to Songpan, dirty-faced bare- footed children ran around yards outside tiny shacks. Women and girls scrubbed clothes against rocks in streams and rivers.
On the more remote part of the Great Wall close to Beijing, souvenir-hawkers in torn canvas shoes follow the trickle of foreign tourists for miles up and down the path in the searing heat patiently waiting for them to stop for a break so they can offer some cold water or postcards for a few yuan. In cities, old men and women with bent backs rummage through rubbish bins collecting cardboard and plastics for sale as recycling.
Looking down on Songpan from the Buddhist temple perched on a hill near the river I realised if I had chosen to come a year later, I would have seen a very different town. I would have been able to climb up the city gates and walls. The streets would be paved and the dust would be gone. The clean inviting hotels described by the Lonely Planet would probably be back and open for business. The chunks of rock being carved at the entrance to the town would be finished to reveal maybe some fascinating symbol of the region.
Part of the allure of China today though is the extent and speed in which the transformation is taking place where old China is struggling to be seen above the scaffolding of the new.