We came to Beijing full of expectation and eager to explore a place marked not by centuries but millennia of history and happenings.

Our preferred mode of exploration is to be on foot, in amongst it all, both on and off the beaten track. Just before we travelled to China I happened upon travel writer and journalist Jonathan Chatwin’s Long Peace Road: A Walk in Modern China (acquired in Waterstones Durham).

Chatwin’s highly informative and insightful bringing together of past and present offers an account of modern China through the marvellous device of a two day walk – in 2016 – down Beijing’s longest road, Chang’an Street. The Chinese character chang (长) means ‘long’ or ‘lengthy’ (长江, Cháng Jiāng, refers to the Yangtze River, the longest river in China). After Beijing, we are to visit the City of Eternal Peace (长安) – known today as Xi’an (or Western Peace). Chatwin suggests that a more poetic interpretation of the name Chang’an would thus be ‘Street of Eternal Peace’. Although, he does add the rider that, in historical terms, the street has rarely been peaceful for very long. Whatever, the street does represent Beijing’s main west-east thoroughfare.