Yu Yuan gardens - an excursion in Classic China

I think China may be my favourite Asian country. It hasnt got the crippling humidity of Thailand or the hawker harassment of India. The crowds are exceptional in this city. You should see the sheer streams of cyclists pouring down Sichuan Lu first thing in the morning.They congregate at zebra crossings ringing their bells furiously. There are grimy bicycle repairmen at the edge of each road ready to mend that snapped chain or failed break for a couple of yuan.

Then there are the smells. There is the faint whiff of drains you usually get in warm cities but also the doughy smell of dumpling. Young men collect them in clay pots to eat later. I found this out as I headed south today to find Yu Yuan gardens. China has impressed me. It is not the grim workers paradise I thought it would be. No one wanders around dressed in workers grey clutching little red books but instead it is a capitalist paradise complete with millionaires and pop stars.

It may be abit plastic but it did have the whiff of Old China. I've been in a world of scrubbed streets and shiny skyscrapers for three weeks. A smidgeon of Old Chinese culture was a tonic to a man like me

But pre-reveloutionary China was at Yu Yuan found to the south and a maze of lanes surrounding a walled garden. It is a strange anomaly having an ancient China section in the middle of a shiny modern city.The area around the garden is rebuilt in fake Qing and Ming dynasty styles. To get to the gardens you have to enter the bazaar. Shop after shop sells antique crafts, foodstuffs, silk kimonos and jewellry. It may be abit plastic but it did have the whiff of Old China. I've been in a world of scrubbed streets and shiny skyscrapers for three weeks. A smidgeon of Old Chinese culture was a tonic to a man like me.

It all starts with a Chinese teahouse. The teahouse stands on stilts above a small lake reached by a zig-zag bridge. The bridge is at right angles so to confuse visiting demons and the water is filled with golden koi fed by titbits from the crowds. The teahouse did have a 17th century ambience with tables in alcoves and old men smoking pipes.The gardens were beyond and were gorgeous.They were a number of walled compounds  with interlinking gates containing the gardens. There were thirty pavilions, lakes, pagodas, bridges and bamboo groves. There were rockeries with water trickling down into ponds flanked by weeping willows. Statues of ancient Chinese gods abounded and lions and dragons guarding every entrance exit.

I spend an hour in the gardens and came away enchanted. The rest of the day was spent down Nanjing Lu walking all the way to Renmin Park. Then I spent the remainder relaxing at the Metropole and packing up to fly home tomorrow.

Three weeks are nearly over and I have wandered the busy streets of Shanghai, climbed ancient rocks in the Australian deserts, swam in blue waters off the Sydney coast and followed the lanes of Melbourne.

All in all, a fabulous time.