Beckham, London 2012 and Roger Moore as Bond

CHINA is delighted to be welcoming so many different nationalities to the Olympics, partly because their presence confirms the country’s growing status in the international community, and partly because they provide a rare opportunity for Chinese citizens to interact with the outside world.

For all that overseas investment has snowballed in recent years, foreigners remain rare on the streets of the Chinese capital.

Indeed, for many of the non-Beijing residents that have travelled from rural China to the capital to watch the Games, this will be the first time they have ever seen someone from a non- Chinese ethnic group in the flesh.

I’ve already lost count of the number of photographs I’ve been asked to pose for, or the number of questions I’ve been asked about Britain.

David Beckham seems to crop up quite regularly, but I’ve also been grilled on the wet British weather, the preparations for London 2012 and, most unexpectedly of all, the films of Roger Moore.

It has been interesting to discover how highly Great Britain is regarded amongst most Chinese citizens, but every now and then, Chinese hospitality has proved a little too much to handle.

Last night, a group of Chinese police stopped at least six cars full of Chinese passengers, just to allow a group of British journalists and myself to cross the road.

Had it happened in Britain, I’m sure we would have been greeted by horns and obscenities. In Beijing, however, we were met with waves and asked to stop for another picture.

Had I been visiting royalty, it would have been just about acceptable. Given my lowly ranking as a journalist, however, it was more than a tad embarrassing.

THE flip side of welcoming Westerners into your country, of course, is that they sometimes ask questions you would rather have gone unsaid.

I’ve tried to be relatively sensitive while broaching the subjects of politics and religion, but my subsequent discussions have still opened a rather different window onto Chinese life.

Build up a relationship with someone and converse in private, and you can hold a full and frank discussion about Tibet, Taiwan and alleged human rights abuses.

Raise the issue with a stranger, though, or attempt to hold a conversation in a public environment, and things tend to be cut short quite quickly.

The power of the state is evident in every conceivable area of Chinese life, but nowhere is it more apparent than in the stifling of the kind of conversation and debate that would not be given a second thought back home.

As I joined a group of tourists at Tiananmen Square yesterday, our tour guide, Lui (not his real name), remained silent whenever the 1989 massacre was mentioned.

Back on the bus, however, he was happy to chat about the public reaction to the death of up to 3,000 protestors, the effect of the failed uprising on the previously buoyant democracy movement, and the fact that Chinese school textbooks effectively claim that the incident did not happen.

In the square, though, surrounded by hundreds of policemen and more than 50 CCTV cameras, he felt unable to provide any answers that might have reflected badly on the Chinese Government.

It may just be apocryphal, but Lui has heard tales of tour guides being grilled about things a lip reader has alleged they said in the square.

For all that China is portraying an image of normality and tolerance this month, the truth is not necessarily as harmonious as the vision that is being projected to the world.

AS well as visiting Tiananmen Square yesterday, I also toured around the incredible Forbidden City, Beijing’s number one tourist attraction and a UNESCO world heritage site.

Commissioned by a Ming emperor in 1406, the walled city took over one million skilled labourers almost 14 years to complete.

For more than 550 years, the Forbidden City was out of bounds for anyone other than the emperor and his officials, concubines and eunuch servants.

The city contains the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world, and is completely awe-inspiring.

Walking around, it was hard to imagine what must have been going through the minds of the first group of Beijing ‘commoners’ to have been allowed access to the city following the Communist Revolution of 1949.

Chairman Mao declared the existence of the People’s Republic of China from the balcony of one of the Forbidden City’s palaces on October 1 1949, and his portrait continues to dominate the main façade of the entrance gate.

Mao continues to cast a considerable shadow over Beijing more than 30 years after his death, and despite his complicity in the slaughter of millions of people, it is still almost impossible to find anyone with a critical word to say about him.