The French delegation has hired out the ballroom in a swanky hotel for a swanky, invite-only soiree, and is making everyone who’s anyone in Guangzhou as well as assorted hangers-on (clearly the category I fall into) dress up, eats lots of free food and drink champagne.

Now, though the Germans traditionally have never been friendly with the French, this is not something I’m about to knock back. I figure since I’m just a German delegation hanger-on – an Australian one, at that – and we’re on the (relatively) neutral soil of the Chinese, we might just be able to get away with it.

So we all pile into the waiting car; and what I’m about to discover is that there’s nothing more corrupting than being chauffeur-driven in an armour-plated Mercedes with a national flag fixed to the front (and so what if it’s not your own?) – people step out of your way (something that doesn’t happen a lot here) and strain to see in the windows, and security guards wave you through without so much as lifting their machine guns. I could get used to this.

The reception is very pleasant in an uppity sort of way, though I couldn’t understand a word of the speeches. When we pull up James, the driver (whose name is actually Mr Quang, but it’s all part of the fantasy), opens my door and then we all shuffle up a red carpet to the hotel entrance where waiters are handing out glasses of coke and fanta, which I don’t take on account of wanting to keep both hands free for the champers.

There is a massive ice sculpture in the shape of the French statue of liberty, and the chandeliers in the ballroom would have literally taken up my entire apartment. I eat enough seafood to feed a small third world country, which I’m not proud of, but which I forget about entirely when we get back into the beflagged car to be escorted to the Guangzhou ballet…