The original statement was bald, but actually right in terms of high-traffic tourist destinations in China. If someone comes up to talk to you in the tourist-haunted centres of big cities they are almost certainly coming in order to scam you in some way, and you are certainly better to assume so until proven otherwise.

But the destinations on the tourist conga line tell you nothing of the real China where phillipas' assertion is true, and where you will often meet with a genuine warmth and courtesy even people from the Chinese countryside will tell you is missing in the big cities (and people from the big cities will tell you is missing in the other big cities, but not theirs).

My favourite parts of China are those where people don't shout "Lao wai!" at you, but instead ask you, "Ni shi waiguoren ma?" Are you a foreigner? (Answering "No, I'm from Xinjiang" always gets a good laugh, although it sometimes gets believed, too.) The next thing you'll be sitting down for a cup of tea in someone's house, lent an umbrella against the rain, or find (as happened to me earlier this year) that a cable car ticket has been purchased for you before you can get to the ticket office yourself.

I remember being in an obscure Guangxi town near the Vietnamese border last year where someone came up and spoke to me in English and I automatically became cautious. But all he wanted was to tell me how to get in touch with the tiny place's only two foreigners, both English teachers, because he thought they'd like someone new to talk to.

Everyone visiting China should try to include some kind of rural experience away from places with high foreign tourist volumes. It's not hard--at least 70% of China remains completely undiscovered by foreign tourists.

Peter N-H