Chinese takeaway

A family connection enabled Cathy Reay to visit a city which is not normally one of China's regular tourist destinations. She enjoyed sumptuous Chinese banquets, beautiful gardens and warm hospitality. But she also found a country which mixes rapid development and westernisation with older monuments, superstitions and attitudes

Although my brother has lived in China for the best part of a decade, I've always found reasons not to visit: "But it's not as cool as Japan! Not as beautiful as India! Not as tropical as Thailand!"

Naturally, my indignation and stubbornness were both completely unfounded. Not only is China the most beautiful country I could ever dream of, there are enough trendy, modern, tropical, hilly, flat, colourful, wild, skyscraper-filled places for an entire lifetime of sightseeing.

My brother lives in the small city of Suzhou, a couple of hours north of the overwhelming metropolis of Shanghai. Unknown to me before our arrival, this unfortunately meant that, after 19 hours on a plane, we then had to board a cramped, stinky bus for another three hours. A cramped, stinky bus with no toilet.

This, I later discovered, set a precedent for an alarmingly toilet-free district. In fact, where public toilets did exist (generally in the tourist areas, which we avoided anyway) they were simply holes in the ground. Owing partly to my disability, and perhaps also because I really haven't practised enough yoga, it was difficult to get used to. Yes, the very first access problem I had with this holiday was the lack of places to pee; let's just say I'm not a very gifted squatter.

Suzhou turned out to serve a transitional purpose, its two million inhabitants bridging the gap between what I previously understood to mean "busy" and the reality of Shanghai's frantic 20 million plus population. Sandwiching a small section of China's longest river, the Yangtze, the city's dazzling and genuinely interesting green spaces and stunning hilly backdrop make for plenty to see and do. There's scarcely any tourist trade, which can be good in terms of crowds but bad in terms of being able to understand the language; if my brother hadn't been around we certainly would have had a lot of trouble going out to eat as it's often assumed you are so regular that you know what you want. Either that or the menu will be completely impossible to guess. Want an easy read version? Ha! Forget it.

The food itself, though, once you get it, is an absolute joy. Hot, steaming dim sum, huge bowls of noodle soup, tasty honey-soaked fruit and all kinds of weird and wonderful fresh fish dishes are regular staples and all often for a quarter of the price you'd expect to pay in the UK. Most stuff is unfortunately still coated in monosodium glutamate, but is noticeably far less fatty than the buffet trays in the shabby-looking Chinese takeaway round the corner. I mastered chopsticks fairly well after a while, though not without a few spillages along the way, but the thing I found hard getting used to was eating everything at the same time. There's no starter, dessert or meat and two veg, dishes are brought out in the order they're prepared, placed in the middle of the table and everyone digs in. I certainly learned how to eat a lot faster!

While we were in Suzhou we visited what felt like a hundred odd gardens, which was actually one of the best things to do. Each wildly different to the next, they featured huge, beautiful pagodas, monuments and temples with their own individual style, history and purpose. If you can ascend a pagoda or two it's well worth it as they often hold the best views of the city (no lifts though, obviously).

At night time the larger gardens are often illuminated by fairy lights and some hold arts events. We saw a rather unusual opera where Chinese performers danced, sang, played and prayed through a series of short stories around eight very different subjects. I'm not sure whether it was just the language barrier that confused us there. Gardens and temples are great for those on a budget as they are normally free, though if you want to see an opera expect to pay around £8.

The gardens in Suzhou are very hard to get to if you don't recognise any symbols; in fact I expect this can be broadened to any journey you want to take in less-westernised areas. Most people seem to take taxis due to their obscenely low price (a £1 minimum and £3 maximum charge in the city centre) and the fact that the city buses aren't very sensibly routed. Plus, of course, there is the accessibility issue and neither method of transport seemed equipped to solve that.

Near the end of our trip we went to Shanghai for a couple of days. The first startling difference I noticed was the sudden increase in price for everything; in Suzhou you pay a maximum of £3 for a taxi, or 10p for a bottle of water (good luck finding water that isn't carbonated though), in Shanghai you pay a minimum of £2.50 for a taxi or 90p for water. Of course it's all dependent on whether you know where to go to avoid the tourist prices, and shopkeepers will often sneak them up for foreigners (as they call us) if they can get away with it.

Everything in the city is magnified; roads are long and wide and tall buildings are constantly being extended skywards to accommodate for the number of workers.

People are usually expected to use overpasses to get across busy roads, which can be tiring with all the stairs. We visited the World Financial Center, the third tallest building in the world, and used the first elevator we'd seen on our entire trip to travel to the top and appreciate the city view from up high. I also walked down Nanjing Road, a six mile long shopping street filled with (disappointingly western) brands and food outlets.

Back in Suzhou, we took a boat ride around the city and visited a Mandarin restaurant that looked like it had been taken straight from the Aladdin storyboard (still no fortune cookies in sight though). Many of my brother's friends' families took us to dinner during our stay and insisted on paying for everything, which, we learned, was customary treatment for visitors. It seemed like once you are no longer a stranger, native people will naturally go out of their way to accommodate, help and, particularly, accompany a foreigner anywhere and everywhere. I grew to really appreciate the companionship I was so frequently offered.

I definitely noticed an absence of visibly disabled people during my trip. Though China is very rapidly evolving in light of its booming tourist trade and strong western influences, attitudes to disability are still very much rooted in the past. A Kingdom of Little People was recently opened in the province of Yunnan, northwest of Hong Kong, in which short-statured people are employed to entertain visitors with repertoires and performances akin to something from a 90s childhood trip to Butlins. Disabled people are segregated and, it seems, shooed away from the public eye. I didn't see a single disabled person in 15 days, which, when compared to the 12 I saw in half that time in Germany, is very telling.

I was told to expect that people would stare, regardless of their age, and take pictures. That definitely happened, and was quite a shock, but it wasn't as negative an experience as people make out. I slowly realised that people were just genuinely curious and the upfront, no-nonsense approach to life meant that they saw nothing wrong in snapping a quick picture of someone. A class of schoolchildren passed by me one day, all staring, and then they came by again and again, until one had the courage to approach me. Instead of calling me a name or asking something about why I was short, she simply questioned why I was sunbathing because they all thought I shouldn't tarnish my "beautiful white skin". The rest of her class then formed a circle around me and started telling me they loved me.

My initial discomfort with attitudes like this made me realise how repressed British society is. Why don't we wander around holding our girlfriends' hands? Or kiss people every time we meet them? While the political landscape in China may not be one I particularly agree with, its people are still going about their lives in a positive way. I met so many genuinely warm, happy faces that it rubbed off on me and I began greeting people with the same affection. When I eventually reached London again, with dozens of photos, email addresses and happy memories in my pocket, I was very sad to go back to quick gaze-averting hellos.

Tips

Visit a Chinese hot pot restaurant. A vat of thin soup is placed in the middle of the table and diners are expected to drop various raw ingredients in, wait while they cook, and fish them out eating directly from the pot. Hot and messy but very fun!

There are millions of temples, but a particularly impressive one can be found at the very top of Tiger Hill, which also plays host to amazing views of the Suzhou city landscape. Amazingly, it's accessible to wheelchairs if you can get someone to drive you up. Visit tourochina.com/sightarea/322/Tiger-Hill for more information.

Take toilet paper and hand sanitizer absolutely everywhere.

How to get there

Qatar Airways were the cheapest airline we found at around £400 for a return trip, though they rarely do direct flights. Suzhou is a 2-and-half-hour bus ride from Shanghai Pudong airport but buses are rarely accessible, or a £30 cab journey. Visit qatarairways.com and travelguidechina.com for more information.