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plastic grapes dangled invitingly.
    Not wanting to face the fare of the boat’s dining room again, Susan and I had instant noodles, fruit and beer for dinner, all of which we had bought very cheaply on our forays ashore. The fruit –mandarins, pears and bananas – was especially good. That night I subdued the neighbours by banging my elbow on the wall and roaring, ‘Quiet!’ and, though we stopped several times to load and unload cargo, I slept well.
    Early in the morning, we pulled into a large town, and I dashed ashore to buy breakfast: more pickled eggs, sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, one of the popular, but obscenely red sausages and a big lidded enamel pannikin for hot drinks.
    For quite a while now both riverbanks had been covered with trees and by midday kilometre after kilometre of bamboo waved in the wind. Behind it stood forests of poplar and pine and among the trees I glimpsed the odd red roof. Gradually a mountain range crept up, fold on fold, as a backdrop to the river. On a headland further on, I saw a pagoda on top of a towering rock at the river’s edge. The Precious Stone Castle can be seen for many kilometres coming or going on the river and has been poised on this peak for 1500 years.
    That evening Susan and I braved the boat’s kitchen again. This time we tried the soup. Served in real soup-kitchen style – slopped with a bent tin ladle from a huge, battered aluminium can as big as an oil drum – it was a greyish conglomeration in which vegetables and dumplings floated. Despite its unalluring appeal, however, it tasted fine, and I was enjoying it until I came across a dead match. Susan laughed so much at this I told her I hoped she had the cigarette butt.
    Various members of the boat staff had told me, in pantomime, that our ETA next morning was six, seven, eight, and nine o’clock. But we actually landed in Wuhan at ten. The day had dawned wet, cold, misty and drab. Visibility was nil and no town was in sight. The weather did not clear and we went ashore, up a long metal ramp, in a damp, steady drizzle. Later I saw that the river here was a mile wide, lined with hideous black factories and fronted by long, flat steps that looked like the ghats on the Ganges.
    Wuhan, at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers, was established in about 600 BC. Now one of China’s largest cities, it is a key traffic junction as well as an industrial centre. The river here is vital but perilous; its banks are lined by high dykes that obscure it from the town, but which failed to save it from the last great flood in 1983. Foreign trading concessions were established in Wuhan in 1861 and it has many fine nineteenth-century buildings in the German municipal style. There is also a 400 year-old Gui Yuan temple that houses a white jade Burmese Buddha with a large diamond in its forehead. The tomb of the Marquis Yi, which was discovered in 1978, is close to Wuhan. The Marquis lived in the 5th century BC and died, greatly mourned, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried with his dog, twenty-one female sacrifices, enough treasure to stock several museums and a couple of orchestras worth of musical instruments.
    Susan was leaving by train for Beijing that evening and I had to buy a ticket on a boat going the rest of the way to Chongqing. We entered the enormous boat terminal complex, which resembled a cross between a massive riverboat and the Sydney Opera House. After many false starts, I was taken in hand by a kind woman who led me through the offices, until we were behind a counter where a row of ladies sat dispensing tickets. This was a new angle for me – it felt like being backstage, behind the scenery. Wherever it was, I was promptly supplied with a ticket.
    Susan and I then attempted to find a phone, so that she could contact the agent who held her train ticket. But in the entire terminal there was not one public phone. Once again we were taken in hand by helpful local people. This time a delightful young