The driver hugged the outside lane as they approached the city centre past the Beijing Hotel and Wangfujing Street. In the distance Margaret could see the ornate towering gate of the Forbidden City, with its huge portrait of Mao gazing down on Tiananmen Square. Heaven’s Gate. It was the backdrop, it seemed, to every CNN report from Beijing. A giant cliché of China. Margaret recalled seeing the pictures on TV of Mao’s portrait defaced with red paint by the democracy demonstrators in the square in ’89. A student herself then, still at medical school, she had been shocked and outraged by the bloody events of that spring. And now here she was, a decade on. She wondered how much things had changed. Or even if they had.

Their car took a sudden left, to the accompaniment of a chorus of horns, and they slipped unexpectedly into a leafy side street with gardens down its centre and locust trees on either side forming a shady canopy. Here they might have been in the old quarter of any European city, elegant Victorian and colonial buildings on either side. Lily half turned, pointing to a high wall on their right.

“Ministry of Public Security in there. Used to be British embassy compound before Chinese government threw them out. This old legation area.”

Further down, past some older apartment blocks that didn’t look remotely European, they took another left into Dong Jiaominxiang Lane, a narrower street where the light was almost completely obscured by overhanging trees. A couple of bicycle repairmen had set up shop on the sidewalk, making the most of the shade. Cars and bicycles crowded the road. On their right, a gateway opened on to a vast modern white building at the top of a sweep of steps guarded by two lions. High above the entrance hung a huge red-and-gold crest. “China Supreme Court,” Lily said, and Margaret barely had time to look before the car swung left and squealed to a sudden halt. There was a bump and a clatter. Their driver threw her hands in the air with a gasp of incredulity and jumped out of the car.