Katie Melua doesn’t know what she’s talking about: there are nowhere near nine million bicycles in Beijing. I should think there probably were in the nineties, but over the past ten years they’ve been seriously upgraded and there are now nine million Mercedes…as well as fifteen million people, about three million building sites, half a million shopping malls and a billion small dogs. Some of these figures might be a bit exaggerated but the point is, there’s a lot going on here.

Once we’d made the decision to have a few stationary months we whizzed straight from Dali back to Kunming and, after a quick overnight stop during which I picked up a nice bout of food poisoning (from the first Western meal I’ve eaten in weeks), made the 2100 kilometre trip north east to the Chinese capital, with me throwing up about every 100 kilometres.

We arrived in Beijing last Thursday evening with the following to do list:

Find a job

Find a flat

Buy stuff for the flat

Buy some clothes that makes us look like ordinary citizens rather than tramps

Replace technological items

Make some friends

Ambitious, but having done very little for six months we felt ready for a bit of self-discipline. It’s now Tuesday, and I’m writing this from our little studio apartment on James’ new lap top – she’s no Ruby but she’s very pretty. I’ve just signed a contract for a four month teaching job at a local primary school (why are you laughing? I love children) and we both have some shiny new clothes from the brilliantly named Alien Street Market, which is full of cheap fur coats for the Russian residents. Not a bad start.

It’s been a bit of a mental few days but it’s all very exciting and Beijing is full of promise: of all the cities we’ve visited in Asia, it is far the most energetic and ambitious, even more so than Bangkok in my opinion. I hate to use the old cliche ‘east meets west’, but it’s very apt for Beijing – the long-standing communist political dogma is still alive and well here but, thanks to China’s increasingly open economic policies, Beijing is voraciously commercial, with a plethora of bars, clubs, theatres, shops and restaurants, a massive business district and an extremely ambitious, stylish new generation of young Chinese.

Thankfully, it doesn’t feel soulless despite the shopping and money-making frenzy, and China’s older culture still permeates through the modernisation – you never know when you’ll fall over a crumbling alleyway crowded with old men playing mah-jong, a little smokey tea houses, a patch of beautiful old architecture or – James’ favourite – a dirt cheap dumpling shop.  We’ve got four months to make ourselves acquainted with it so we’ve done no proper sightseeing yet, but tonight we’re going to sniff out a few bars and, I hope, some Pee King duck. If anybody fancies a visit, we have a very comfortable sofa…