Evenings at the university had become more social, and I was particularly keen to participate as my time in Jishou was drawing to a close. In just over a week I was due to begin my slow path back to Shenyang, where Xiao's mother was awaiting me to escort her to New Zealand. I was beginning to appreciate Jishou more and more, and was reluctant at the thought of leaving.

There was one major event that seemed to command pole position in the social calendar of the university students: a disco that was planned for being held in the university's gymnasium. On the day itself, the students took hours with their preparations and grooming, and as Hamish, Bonnie & I tried to wander towards the hall inconspicuously about half an hour after it had begun, there were already crowds of students both inside and out. It was a hot evening, and the hall was stuffy as couples tried curious mixtures of ballroom and Korean dancing on the happy techno soundtrack. The students were elated and we felt a little out of our element, so didn't stay long - but Hamish & I were impressed with the enthusiasm of the students when compared with the staunch poseurs of similar dances we'd both attended at our old school. Jishou University's social was without the underage drinking and smoking of Auckland school dances, and with more of a sense of fun. One student had dressed as Michael Jackson and took centre floor with an immaculately practised routine - and later I saw Sammi, the girl who'd cornered me on my first night in Jishou for a dance - twisting electric latin moves with an unimpressive looking boy who was also not short of talent.

Sammi had been making contact with me on a regular basis during my stay in Jishou, insisting I accompany her dancing again. Her attention was a nuisance to Bonnie who was embarrassed at the unchecked enthusiasm of a fellow female student, and I hadn't given it much thought, although did often chat with her at the English corners I attended. After the social she became more insistent, and so I agreed to visit a dance hall with her in the last week before I left.

I met her outside the school gates and we had a meal together, chatting amicably over pig's ears on rice. She had worn clothes spectacular enough to markedly offset the dirty street with its line of grubby restaurants. It seems to be the fate of fashion-conscious young Chinese women to develop an air of resolute, angry grace in the constant attempt to make a rebellion of beauty against the unconquerable drabness of urban China. This was a demeanour that she tried to maintain throughout the meal, and on the bus full of farmers on the way to town, but her attempts were thwarted by her all-too-obvious girlish excitement. I'd been reluctant to go, but I found her bright behaviour comforting given my immanent departure from Jishou, and so I enjoyed her company and pretty conversation as I watched out over Jishou in the dim evening blue.

Sammi led me along a series of back alleyways, and I was soon lost in the grey of concrete and dust: we stepped over some fallen boards in a doorway and proceeded to climb the stairway of a damp old block which seemed to contain old offices and stalls, some of which were already disused. Of course, it seemed to me to be the wrong building, until we arrived at the fifth floor, where a lone guard stood before a huge, closed door. Sammi spoke a few words and we were admitted.

China has surprised me too many times, and so I tried to take it in my stride that behind the door on the fifth floor of this squalid, cold building in a remote Chinese city was a smartly lit, ornately furnished ballroom, in the centre of which was a polished dancefloor where around forty couples stepped perfectly about each other in century-old European dance steps. Around the dance floor were set comfortable sofas and armchairs, positioned around small tables with ash trays and saucers of sunflower seeds. The lights were subdued and romantic, the dancers were neat and butterfly-like as they turned, the women in plush frocks or jerseys with jeans, the men in the same dark, smart suits they wear every day. I was shy and sat in a dark corner on an armchair, but found my self-consciousness was unnecessary. Chinese people will act surprised to see a foreigner even in the most frequently visited tourist spots; here, where I was quite possibly the first European face to ever enter the room, I was ignored by even the attendants taking around drinks.

I watched them all dancing for a while, having to confess to Sammi that I was entirely unequipped with any ability in ballroom dancing. She stepped up to the dancefloor herself and took on a few partners, easily outshining them. I watched her pass around the floor like an electric charge. There was something about Sammi that was sinuously physical, as if her mind had a closer connection to her body than most people do. I noticed several young men cast appreciative glances at her figure and movements. I chewed on some sunflower seeds, failing to look nonchalant.

Suddenly, the music stopped and the lights faded right down. Sammi snaked back towards me and grasped my hand, pulling me to the dancefloor. 'This is what I brought you here for', she told me. 'This is the final dance of the night - the close-dance. You have to hold your partner close'. Without any opportunity for protest, she put her arms around me and landed her head on my shoulder.

The music started up again, slow and romantic. It was too dark to see any of the other couples clearly, the only light coming from a projection of a field of flowers on the far wall. I was practically motionless in surprise as Sammi's hands worked all over my body and as she pressed her chest harder and harder into mine. She swayed her hips to the music and I blushed, attempting to ignore the friction. This continued for two numbers, and then abruptly finished; the lights snapped back on and Sammi walked me back to our seat as if nothing happened. I had the sensation that I'd been a non-participant in the performance.

On the bus back to the University, she told me: 'I will never make the close-dance with anyone else'.

Hunan has been inhabited for thousands of years, and in each Hunanese city can be found the remnants of ages gone. Jishou university is just a little way out of the city centre, and is built on relatively undeveloped farmland; in fact, plots of land within the campus grounds were still being planted and kept by farmers living in stone dwellings that the university has perhaps been constructed around. The parts of the central city that I normally saw were relatively well developed, but I had been told of a much older district, not far away from Jishou's train station, which still retained the character of a Chinese village of Qing Dynasty times.

An ornate marble bridge similar in style to the university's spanned the river that divided Jishou new from Jishou old. Hamish, Bonnie and I were led there for lunch by one of Hamish's most capable students, Carol.

To get to the bridge, we first had to enter the public park, which I'd also not had the chance to visit during my stay. The park stretched a good distance along the bank of the river, but was not very wide, and consisted of a sequence of interconnected close parallel pathways through the greenery. At odd, surprising intervals were erected statues and artworks, some of which were very fine pieces, and again I was given to wonder on just how many middle-sized cities are scattered across China, each with parks, temples, artworks and unique characteristics, none of which will ever appear in any travel guide. One could backpack for a thousand years around China and not see half of its treasures; as I looked across the river at the painstakingly-worked wooden trellises on old, brick buildings, the likes of which I'd not yet seen in China, I was reminded once more of the thrill of discovering, detail by detail, the complex panorama of a country that is truly in the process of transition.

It was a cool afternoon. Clouds made wide shadows over Jishou; some young women were crouching at the riverbank handwashing brightly coloured clothes. A lone trumpeter had sat himself down under the marble bridge to practice blues riffs against the river's echoes on the stone. We passed over the bridge, admiring the engravings and looking out to where, about a kilometre away, the river cascaded into the stubby group of grey skyscrapers around central Jishou.

I remembered the blocky huts of Northern Chinese homes, heavily insulated in earth and brick against the cold. Southern houses tend to breathe the warmer air, and the terraces on the upper stories of these houses in old Jishou were decorated in fine woodwork like lace, letting through the cool breeze. The houses were distinctly Chinese with straight roofs that arched slightly in the corners, and were set in close communities along winding cobblestone pathways and stairs.

Some young men were drinking fresh beer under the shade of brightly coloured parasols covering the restaurant tables at the Old Jishou end of the bridge. We smiled as we passed and wandered along the walkway crawling up the edge of the river bank. The old brown houses were friendly impositions against the sky, with washing and vegetables hanging over the sculpted balconies beneath the electric powerlines. We were headed for what was clearly a temple, although architecturally it resembled more of a gigantic orange bunker. We'd seen it from the park; when compared to the temples I'd visited with Faith and Feifei, it was a brute of a thing, however it was a temple that was clearly in greater service than either of the other two, which would seem to have been just as likely to attract tourists as devotees. Inside, it was a very simple affair, an assembly hall with park benches and a small flaking idol on a wooden stage. There was no roof: the open sky was sheltered out by a canopy draped over a stretch of rope, and drying clothes hung from hangers anywhere there was a metre of wire to spare. I had the feeling of being in a peasant's church, which was what it was.

We wandered back into the main streets of Old Jishou where we found a quiet restaurant with good eggplant on rice, and tasty, if slightly cold, egg and tomato. In the darkened room, Hamish and I felt hidden inside some genuine and fixed aspect of Jishou, almost real participants, although this was a temporary feeling at best. As we stepped outside on the road back to the city side, passers-by stopped and helloed us as per usual. On one street, prostitutes leaned from 'hairdresser' salons in pink-neon framed doorways - they were unglamorous looking teenagers and eyed us with sad, unenthusiastic faces.

One impressive building we stopped to investigate was fascinating - a huge, circular complex built around a central waterfall and pond, the whole building decorated with gaudily coloured bathroom tiles. There were several levels and a complicated system of staircases interconnecting them, some of which led up to observation towers looking out towards central Jishou and the tobacco covered hills beyond. We passed a gymnastics class and weightlifting room on one level, and a series of classrooms on another. Hamish and I made out the characters for 'English' hanging over one of the door of one children's class: inside, several rows of small desks faced a simple blackboard. The atmosphere of the empty room was plain and comfortable, cold and appealing. Hamish remarked that he'd have liked to have taught voluntary classes in weekends there would the university have allowed it.

As we walked back to the main bus stop, the people of Jishou who passed us seemed to be living a life perfectly, if not comfortably, balanced between the staunch politics of old China and the economic demands of the new - and yet still managing to maintain the same local atmosphere that has probably existed in Jishou for centuries.

On my last day in Jishou, I climbed for the last time the slopes behind Hamish's apartment and stood alone looking over the university and out towards the city. From that vantage I was able to see the entire campus, the roads out to the temples on the left and the markets far away on my right, the paddy fields across the rail line before me, and the peaceful university lake spanned by its great marble bridge.

I had come to the mountain to express a quiet gratitude for Jishou, and for all the impressions I had been privileged to take away with me of this extraordinary place; this riddle of green and grey where I had been an uninvited guest and yet had been accepted with gracious hospitality, and where I had experienced an independence which allowed me to understand China's place in my own reckoning. I have loved China since I was taught my first Chinese character, and in Jishou that love came to maturation.

There is an extent to which China lives up to its stereotypes and an extent to which it defies them; for anyone trying to understand China there must come a point where it becomes clear that China as an entity is the greatest continuing project of humankind, and that the only correct attitude one can take towards Her is one of awe and humility. This profound ebb and tide of history and language stands with intense focus on every inch of its land, and in Jishou I was allowed a small participation that rewarded me far more than my own country ever had.

It's unlikely that I'll ever return to Jishou. During my last moments there, as the train accelerated towards Changsha in the North, I stood with my hand on the window glass watching as it seemed to fall away from me.

Nothing that is done may ever be undone. Nothing lost. The steam from the malatang cauldron rises to the ceiling of the student's dining hall and stays forever.