So here's another picture for you-our fine fat friend a number of years younger, a little more hair plastered to his fat forehead, a fold or two less rolling over his ill-fitting Thai fake Levi jeans…

There I was. Sitting in a café in Beijing, cup of tea wedged firmly between fat fingers (familiar theme here…), watching with mild curiosity a steel bar describe a perfect arc through the air to embed itself into a hapless fellows skull, a screaming Indian attached at that point to either side of the bar. Now, I hear you ask, dear reader, how did our pudgy gormless hero get himself into this particular mess? Let me tell you…..

North Vietnam, sweating as the fat controller struck his pudgy yellow finger at me through the air. "You all pay me $100 each or you're staying in Vietnam!" Bloody Hell, thinks I, a lot of money but I do have a train to catch. This train, the Hanoi-Peking Express, was sitting somnolently at the border point to China. The route had just been reopened and the border guards were keen for their bit of baksheesh. We were all keen to get back on the train-some of us were ethnic Vietnamese Americans touring, some of us daft backpackers life myself. There was even my cabin mate for the journey, Miro Klein, a young fellow from Philly who was off to visit the tool factory in Shanghai his grandfather had left him. I myself was just glad to be rid of Indochina, as one is. Enough pushing my way through bemused border guards in Cambodia, clutching their kalashnikovs like old women their handbags as I screamed through the post and ran to a nice patch of Vietnamese soil to fertilize it with Australia's best nitrates. Enough tracer bullets in the sky over Phnom Penh, obsequious brothels in Siem Riep and enough dodgy freaks in Hanoi (that beautiful misty city). It was Peking or bust.

"Will $22 do?" I asked later in private, half jokingly, to the great quivering gelatinous sweating blob in front of me. "But of course, old boy," he ejaculated (with a Vietnamese accent), a great beam lighting up his big pasty moon face.

the Fat Controller waving farewell....

So back on the train I was, and not a moment too soon. I still recall with some relish that poor American family standing there on that sweltering plain as the train drew away. Silly proud sods.

There we were chugging away through China. It was a spectacular train (or at least first class was, which I was of course in) and I lived for three days in a state of rarefied grace. My cash reserve (all of $22-those were the days!) had been exhausted and now all I had were travellers' cheques, which of course the Chinese waiters just scoffed at. My buddy Miro (tight sod) generously bought me a bowl or two of steamed rice before he slipped off at Canton to join his connecting train.

There I sat for the next couple of days, watching the endless drab flat fields and the curiously Victorian cities and towns (colourless industrial buildings, blue suited figures crawling around) slip by. With the hunger, alone in my beautiful cut glass and white linen railway compartment it was all a bit unnerving and surreal. Well, at least I can use the ATM the moment I hit Beijing, I thought to myself comfortingly. Little did I know.

After a seemingly endless crawl past steamtrains and carts in this Leviathan of a country, my train finally chugged into its destination. Beijing is at once a gleaming modern city, open and off-limits simultaneously. I walked out of the train to the nearest ATM (people on the other side of the automatic door bowed, self-consciously, as I walked in, the bank trying to appear modern and Japanese). The machine only took Chinese Mastercards. Fancy that. Not one Westerner in sight at all on the main railway concourse. I found a nice educated gent who told me I'd have to find a certain type of bank to change my travellers' cheques. Fair enough. So I walked. And walked. And walked. And walked. Certainly a cool intro to the city (not unlike my 5 am intro to Delhi, the old man washing himself, steam rising from his God-like muscles, the three-wheeled truck screaming past me on the deserted street with its twenty foot-high load of straw bales, the monkeys, the eagle glaring at me from nine feet away as I sipped a coffee at a rooftop café next to its TV aerial eyrie.) Yes, I think that being in a state of delirium is the only way to see a new culture and world city.

I finally found a bank and just as I walked in, the entire staff of thirty-odd lowered their heads onto their desks for their lunch hour. Very civilized indeed, I thought. Then as one, an hour later, they all reanimated, took a reinvigorating sip of green tea from their sealed jam jars and sparked to life.

With a fistful of yuan, I burst back onto the street and threw myself like a long-lost lover onto the nearest street vendor. Full of some thoroughly mysterious yet delicious pancakes or dumplings or something spicy and greasy and fine, I re-embarked on my journey. Now, as it was entering mid-afternoon, I needed to find a place to sleep. My Lonely Planet had, needless to say, proved useless. My plan all along had been the old favourite-to attach myself to some other backpackers and just follow them. Hah! I honestly hadn't seen one European. My luck changed, however, as about half an hour after leaving the bank, I saw one; a wiry, sheepish parsimonious man across a crowded square. I tried to catch his eye but he avoided me. Your ass is mine, I thought, and I took off in pursuit.

When I finally caught this frightened deer of a fellow, it turned out that he wasn't a chubby spoiled Ozzy Euro-trash backpacker like yours truly, but in fact an Afghan, one of a fair sized minority living in Beijing. Well, fair enough, thinks I. He'll do just fine. As it turned out, he spoke very decent English and we became the best of friends for the afternoon. "I know a good hotel for backpackers," he said, "but first I'd like to drop by a friend's café to pick something up."

"Of course, old bean," I said, knowing that it wasn't one of these buy a carpet off my cousin scams.

We ended up in yet another odd corner of this odd city (what a day!) and lo and behold, we could have been in Lidget Green or East Ham (two of the largest Pakistani populations in the UK and typically enough the only two parts of England that I have any personal experience with). Yep, it was a completely Pakistani area with Halal butchers and cafes and curry houses, all within 100 yards of bustling Beijing. This is more like it, thinks I; I knew I'd find my niche in this city. After nearly four months of southeast Asia with its wretched green tea and rice, I was completely ready for the black tea and goofy grin of the Indo-European.

It was at that point that I saw the café, an image of which would be indelibly burned into my memory. 'Let's pop in here- it belongs to a friend of mine", said my afternoon chum. Why the sod not?, I thought, and within a minute my duffle bag was on the ground and there was a great white steaming mug of black tea with milk and sugar and a tray of cakes in front of me. Suit you, sir! After my ordeal of a day, I honestly couldn't have been happier.

We had been there for 20 minutes, and I was just sitting there, ruminating on my second cup of tea, when this gigantic pantheon of a northwest frontier type walks in carrying a cricket bat. You beauty, thinks I, seeing the bat, getting all nostalgic about the Commonwealth and the brotherhood of men. He was 6' 8" if he was an inch and dressed in those traditional Pakistani robes and hat that you only see in Yorkshire.

"Who said the empire was a bad thing?" I thought as this great hulk-wallah sidled past me, bat in hand. Evein in Beijing, the earthly seat of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, we find the tentacles of the Commonwealth! So there we were, my friend and I, sipping our teas as this Goliath strolled through the café. I lost sight of him for awhile and was probably probing my colleague about the various hoori's he'd known when I heard an awful ruckus erupt just a few feet away (the café was just a room about 25 feet by 25 feet). The great behemoth was cursing some flea of a fellow and waving his cricket bat furiously. Hmm, some disagreement about the noble game, thinks I, returning to my tiffin, but in the next instant this great building of a man sprang up onto the little fellow's table, yelling some unintelligible fiendish oriental gibberish. Hang on, I think, it's just a game! And then whack! The cricked bat descends onto the minnow's head (ah, the sound of willow!) and then again and again. Cor blimey, I think, chubby fingers encircling my precious teacup. At this moment, as if choreographed by some evil 1930's genius, a platoon of murderous villains pours in through the only door waving wooden clubs and steel bars. "A bit much over cricket," I thought. Then proceeded, needless to say, a great blood-letting of screaming Indians being beaten and screaming Indians beating. We all know the scene too well. Frightful fun, I must admit (unless you're an Indian being beaten, that is). It was a classic brawl-all the tables and chairs knocked over, people on the ground, blood, hair, screaming.

The sounds of the steel and wooden coshes whacking against arms and shoulders and chests and faces and legs was incredible. I hadn't seen Indians this mad since that time in Rajastan when I put that bike tyre round a sacred cow's head and whacked it on the arse to send it running in one direction, and a great mob of furious Indians running in the other direction-towards me!

I was, of course, a little bit worried for my cup of tea and I thought my little dark buddy might cop a beating, but he was spared. As the screaming reached its crescendo, our table was knocked away from under our noses (teacup safe in hand). One screaming badmash, one of the beaters, turned around, bloody cudgel in hand and glared at me. Oh, dear, I thought. Then, in true Indian style, this murderous glare turned into the most friendly and accommodating smile, as he picked up my table and motioned for me to take my chair. I kid you not. He then turned around and continued with the carnage. Jolly decent people, these Indians, I thought to myself as I finished my tea. Then I ran for it.

So that's my memory of Beijing, a city much like any other in the world. I went back to the café the following day (one always returns to good restaurants) to pay my bill and have another glorious cup of tea. All signs of the fracas had been repaired or mopped up. The owner, looking terribly sheepish, told me that it had been a money thing (not cricket after all) and that it happened all the time. Terribly bad for business, he said, wiggling his head apologetically.

I sympathised, thanked him, paid him the 60 cents or whatever it was, and jumped on my bicycle to disappear into the throng. What a palaver!

And that was that.