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Shenzen is known, if at all in the west, as the place with the largest number of construction cranes in the world (as, it has to be said, are several other locations in China!); hence it is one of the fastest growing areas in the enture history and geography of the globe. Imagine my (naive) enthusiasm in finding in Hong Kong a leaflet entitled Shenzen Excursion. In fact (and as an old hand should have realised this was unlikely to be a Daily Worker-type sponsored glimpse of a socialist future) there was barely a mention in this brochure of the multi-storey wild west city, nary a picture of a skyscraper. Shenzen Excursion provides the following Disneyfications of Chinese Culture:

*Splendid China (D599) which "reproduces of more than a hundred scenic wonders in seventy famous places arrayed in their geographical order...you will also have a comprehensive experience with the traditional dishes, antiques and handicrafts of different nationalities."

Not if I have anything to do with it I won't. Nor will I be joining Tour D5110: China Folk Culture Villages, with its "life-size villages representing typical ethnic architectural styles of 21 selected nationalities have been built in it (sic). Folk songs and dancing (no, please, anything but folk songs and dancing) of different ethnics are performed by professional artists...."

It is fun to make fun of tourists; especially fun to make fun of those who call themselves travellers. The traveller is a culturally sensitive adventurer who goes off the beaten track, etc etc. The tourist is the despised visitor who conforms to the usual itineraries. The tourist tends to stay in the cities. The traveller penetrates the hinterland.

I found a picture of two travellers in my Indonesia guidebook; the caption read: "Travellers prepare to leave for..." Each of the 'travellers', great steak and milk-weaned Antipodean lunks, each of some six foot four inches sported a massive pack; they were seated authentically in bicycle rickshaws virtuous in the authenticity of their holiday experience, about to be pedalled into the heart of darkness by...two skinny little local boys apparently aged about ten. Travellers! I love it.

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