China -

n the beginning I was an enthusiast, but the nine years since I first came to China have seen my appetite for curly roofs and rebuilt-last-week 'antiquities' gradually wane. It has been a while since I have shelled out for the privilege of dressing up as Genghis Khan and posing on a sour-faced camel.

But when Granny wrote to say that she would like to visit, my curiosity was re-kindled. Here was an opportunity to lap up some tour-bus kitsch one more time, as well as do a quick check-up on some of China's ancient heritage: is the Great Wall still there? – that kind of thing.

Remember the guy whose pet dog Einstein could play chess? He told the press it wasn't really anything so special, because he beat the pooch three games out of every four. Well, Granny is 83 this year, and a couple of years back she played me at tennis – but don't be too impressed, I trounced her in a fifth-set tie-break.

Flying in to Shanghai's Pudong airport, Granny hit the ground running, and I was still trailing in her wake four cities, five train-rides and one fortnight later.

First stop, the Bund. Visitors have to see it. And, of course, standing there on the waterfront, they invariably want to check out that outsized tripod with the red glassy balls on the Pudong-side of the river. We've all seen the signs, we've all read the sceptical guidebook entries, but hardly any of us have actually taken the plunge and bought a ticket to ride under the Huangpu river via the Bund Tourist Tunnel. Granny, however, was game.

"Ooh, isn't this fun!" she whooped, as our glass bubble-car floated through a weird tubular constellation of pink and orange lights.

I wouldn't rate it as one of Shanghai's premier attractions, but if you're fed up with playing sardines on the metro, it makes for an interesting and crowd-free alternative trans-Huangpu trip. And, for an extra RMB 20, you can combine it with a visit to the Museum of Chinese Sex Culture – if you think you'd enjoy showing your grandmother that sort of thing. I chickened out, so instead we strolled south down the Pudong waterfront and caught the ferry (RMB 0.5) back to the west bank, hemmed in by a melee of bicycles, mopeds and scooters.

You can't very well send your grandmother home from China without showing her the Great Wall, so our next port of call had to be Beijing. A fleet of half a dozen express trains leaves Shanghai every evening between seven and eight o'clock, arriving twelve hours later in the heart of downtown Beijing. Beds in four-berth soft-sleeper cabins cost less than RMB 500 and are very comfy, even if the Spam-on-toast breakfast in the dining car is, shall we say, missable.

There is something about a visit to the Great Wall that even the 'hello-postcard' jamboree does not diminish. For me, it ranks among those few sights around the world that do not leave you feeling that it looked better on TV. Some prefer to seek out 'undiscovered' sections of the Wall where you might enjoy the landscape in something approaching peace, but for the authentic Lego-brick version, pile into a day-tour minivan to Badaling. Here the Wall is shiny new and for your ticket money you not only see one of the greatest tourist attractions on Earth, you also get a great lesson in economics and social psychology.

Pay your money, pass through the turnstiles, climb onto the Wall and take your choice – left or right. You are free to go either way. And here's the psychology: everybody turns left because, well, it can only be because everybody else turns left too.

And then, the economics. To the left, a thousand T-shirt vendors squabble for custom. Their mentality: competition may be fierce, but at least there is no shortage of buyers. Sales pitches are delivered with enthusiasm and persistence, backed up with a dose of not-always-gentle manhandling should you let slip a sliver of interest in the goods on show. The Great Wall famously failed to keep the invaders out on several occasions, but this modern-day army of wall-top knickknack floggers presents a far more formidable obstacle than the Wall itself ever did.

To the right, it is a different world. You are likely to have a good kilometre of wall almost to yourself. Standing aloof on the watchtower at the top of this section is a solitary postcard-pusher of an altogether different breed. Pensive, quiet, almost meditative, he has opted out of the mass-market hubbub, preferring to go it alone as the monopoly souvenir supplier to the half-dozen or so lost souls who might wander up the 'wrong' side of the wall each day.

The joy of jumping on the tour-group charabanc is that there is usually an unexpected treat in store. More often than not, this will be a thinly disguised attempt to separate you from the contents of your wallet, but if you get yourself into the right mindset, it can be the highlight of the day. Our not-in-the-brochure stop-off on the way home involved us being lectured on the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. Having been ushered off the bus and seated in a strange room, two allegedly eminent white-coated practitioners were presented to us (cue: applause, please). We, the unsuspecting audience – no longer simply tourists but patients – were invited to submit to diagnosis and, if necessary, treatment. Granny was given a clean bill of health, but others were not so lucky and were sent to the pharmacy downstairs with prescriptions for a variety of expensive cures.

A handful of temples, a Forbidden City, a scattering of imperial tombs and a healthy dose of Beijing duck later, Granny was still keen for more. So, in search of some contrast to the big-city worlds of Shanghai and Beijing, we caught the train south to Qufu, the small Shandong town where Confucius is buried, and where 78 generations of his descendants have since lived. Where better to take one's own real-life revered ancestor than to the hometown of Chinese ancestor-reverence?

A ten-minute rickshaw ride north of town takes you to the Forest of Confucius, a woodland necropolis for Confucius' extended family, the Kong clan. Part leafy park, part celebrity cemetery, it is pleasing for its tumbledown lack of pomp, and, once you have run the gauntlet of Great Sage-themed souvenir stands lining the entrance, it is possible to spend hours getting pleasantly lost among the glades and graves. Pick up a pocket-sized copy of the Sayings of Confucius from one of the vendors on the way in and you can ponder words of Confucian wisdom as you wander.

An electric buggy-train will fly you around at an irreverent lick, but to take in the place at a more appropriate pace, you can hire a clapped-out bicycle and reach the resting-place of Confucius himself on two very wobbly wheels. The grave is a simple grassy mound, fronted by an inscribed stele. Its low-key feel is a nice contrast to the trumpet-blowing excesses of the imperial tombs around Beijing, Nanjing and Xi'an, despite the fact that senior Kongs have at times attained a status approaching that of the emperor. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Kong patriarchs under the title of Yansheng Duke were granted the unique right to ride a horse inside the imperial palace in Beijing. Largesse from successive emperors allowed the Confucius family mansion and the adjacent temple complex to grow to a scale and grandeur just one rank below the Forbidden City.

Back in Shanghai, showing Granny around gave me the excuse I needed to check out my own backyard and do the things that, as a Shanghai resident, I would otherwise probably never get around to: a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich on the roof of the Peace Hotel; a trip up the Jinmao tower; even a visit to the silk museum in nearby Suzhou. The exhibition of silk weaving technology through the ages was interesting enough (they have some pretty impressive looms, complete with detailed instructions on how to prevent your warp getting tangled in your weft), but we had really come to see their famous display of live silkworms doing… well, doing whatever it is that live silkworms do. Granny and I never found out. We were there too early – silkworms, the curator explained apologetically, don't come out to play until the first week of May.

"Maybe next time, then," said Granny.