South of the clouds

THE official line is that China has everything to offer the visitor, and the ambition is to turn the country into the world's biggest tourist destination. Yet five-star luxury outside Beijing, Shanghai and a couple of other cities is still scarcely to be found. Meanwhile, in the capital itself, greedy developers have used the cause of the Olympic Games in 2008 to commit the grossest acts of cultural vandalism. In short order, vast swathes of the ancient city that dates back to the 13th century have been destroyed, and monstrously plain commercial towers erected in its place. It has turned a city of fascinating, age-old neighbourhoods into a charmless metropolis. Destruction, too often, is China's response to its heritage, which, if it survives at all, risks then being sanitised for touristic consumption. No, if you hope to escape China's supreme uglification, you have to go much farther afield.