Feature: Paris to Beijing: stage four

Eventually, after more hours than I care to remember, we are allowed across the border. The people here look more Middle Eastern than my idea of typically Chinese, and many of the road signs are in Arabic script. Suppose I shouldn't be surprised, as there are 56 officially recognised ethnic groups in this land of 1.3 billion people. Excuse my ignorance, but nor am I expecting twin-humped camels as an everyday and evidently effective mode of transport for many men, women and children. From previous visits to other parts of China I know all about the bicycles, motorcycles with trailers, three-wheeled sort-of cars, smoke-belching tractors, carts made from scrap wood and drawn by wretched, skinny beasts, not all of them with four legs. But those two-humped camels take me aback.

And those bloody car, van and truck drivers. They are 100% certified nutter. Off the motorway they drive in the middle of the road, either side of the central solid white lines, on the basis that they're less likely to clobber pedestrians and riders and drivers of slow, unlit machines crawling along on either side of the street. Trouble is, the slowish, centre-of-the-road boys are duly overtaken and undertaken by anything that's more powerful, leading to rear-end pile-ups, head-ons and every other type of shunt imaginable.

One of my Russian colleagues sees a farmer roll his tractor, which is immediately surrounded by gravely concerned onlookers. The bruised and bloodied old boy is left on his own until the Russian journo and a DaimlerChrysler doc get to him and patch him up. The harsh truth is that as just one of 353 million agricultural workers in China, the injured chap would be easier to replace than the ancient but valuable tractor.

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