Even bigger weekend

Beijing is as (or perhaps even more) barking mad than Shanghai. The traffic is even more awe-inspiringly insane - it took 1 hour 20 to get to the office on Friday morning - and the disrespect for traffic regulations and other drivers is something to behold.

Interestingly, this desperate need to get to where you are going before anyone else does, is not confined to land-based transport - a group of 10 or so of us (people from the office and drawn from Tony's enormous global circle of friends) went drinking beer on a boat on the lake last night. The 12 boat pile-up at the bridge was incredible. The boat trip was wonderful - beautiful warm breeze on the lake, 18 bottles of Tsing Tao and a classical Chinese musician performing songs on a kind of guitar / mandolin thing (that's the official name for it). All for less than £35. To my mind this beat the experience of a noisy Houhai bar full of braying expats hands down.

Take a step back to Friday night. Everything starts with food. Yet another excellent meal - this time Taiwanese style. The restaurant was trying to be very hip which I couldn't care less about, but the food was uniformly great. If I tried to describe the variety, or to really describe the differences between all the various different types of Chinese food that I have sampled, I couldn't do them justice. It's enough to say that there is a fantastic variety of different styles available and if you are lucky enough to have an expert showing you around, you can experience them all in Beijing.

Afterwards the group moved on to a club called Suzie Wong's. I mentioned Tony's circle of friends and this includes the 6ft 8 inch ex-Basketball star Ma Jian who paved the way for sportsmen and women to leave China and go to the US. He's a hugely impressive, interesting educated and entertaining man to talk to. He also makes it very easy to get a great table at a packed club... The top floor is a roof terrace with chilled music and big sofas which is where we spent the evening demolishing bottles of Absolut.

Another club - Vic's - to finish the night very late. The main rooms at both clubs were rammed and unbelievably noisy. But because they both had (at least) two rooms as far as I can remember, you could always get away from the aforementioned ex-pats and avoid the cheesy music they favour. The reason they are so rammed, is that most of the floor space is given over to tables where affluent Chinese spend the evening partying - buying bottles of whisky, playing dice and spending lots of money. This is why you don't pay to get in but also why the dancefloor is the size of a postage stamp.

A late start to Saturday. We hire a taxi driver for 500RMB (£30) for the day to take us to and from the Great Wall at Mutianyu. This takes about 2 hours (maybe a little less) from central Beijing. Effectively, you travel 2 hours and you are still in Beijing - or at least an outlying district of it called Huarou. Visiting the wall at Mutianyu means that you can stop for (yes, you guessed it) yet another excellent lunch on the way. The roadside restaurant is not glamorous but the freshly caught fish - you can catch them yourself if you like, from the big tank next to the tables - is fabulous. There is sashimi of something fish, barbecued other something fish with chilli and cumin, other fish in brown sauce, beef with green beans and a lamb hot pot style dish with flat breads sort of like parathas. Excellent.

The Wall is indeed Great. Fatmaninshanghai + 32 degree heat = go up in the chairlift although you can walk up if you like. I don't know who it was that classified and decided what qualifies your acceptance into the Seven Wonder's of the World Club, but they got it bang-on with the Great Wall. Maurice is much more intelligent than I am and brought his camera with him to China. Pictures would be good here, wouldn't they? They say that "A picture speaks a thousand words" and I am guessing that the last thing my devoted army of one reader (myself) needs is another thousand words of my drivel right now. Go and buy a Great Wall picture book. Or probably Alan Whicker has been here - rent the DVD. Or get on a plane and come and visit it yourself. It is as impressive as you have been led to believe. It takes your breath away. How did they build it? Did it keep the Mongolians out? Yes, for a while I guess it did.

Humans have a strange urge to leave their mark on the world long after they have left it. Building a Great Wall is one way of doing that. Scrawling your name on the Great Wall is another. I am ashamed to say that Frank Morgan (hopefully no relation) had chosen this option along with thousands of others. Frank, you are an asshole.