M: Hey Jasper, I don’t know about you there at Sedgefield, but here in Somerset West, Victoria street, alongside the municipality licence department and the library, has been transformed with a luxurious Chinese BAIC (Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. Ltd.) vehicle salesfront , replacing the former grandiose Ford depot whose logo on a tall tower spells irony?

J: It’s quite the change from the little R5 ‘FongKong’ shops that came from nowhere post-1994: here we have a big deal dealer-ship displacing old Henry!

M: And, you know, most places I get to hear nowadays, or see, and taste, are all about old man Donald and his sorts of farmings.

Ploughshares into swords again? Very very few folk at the various stoeptalks seem to have anything to say about China.

J: Well, I mean, who talked of China? We had “East wind, West wind” by Pearl S Buck, in our bookshelf. I read it as a kid. Later, I found “The Good Earth”, What I do recall was that China to me, and my Union of South Africa peers, until and beyond the 1930s, was overwhelmingly about peasant farmers.

Well, that was the common belief, but it can’t have been the only truth - Buck Clayton, a Count Basie sideman, ran a successful big band in Shanghai (until 1933, said his book, so he must have been there for some years).

M: Have you, who have driven an Austin Gypsy, and a Jowett Javelin in your time - knowingly - driven (in) a Chinese-built car?

J: I hardly remember the Austin. I think it was actually an Austin Champ, not a Gypsy, quite an amazing vehicle, but that is another story. I did drive it all of a hundred transmission-chattering yards.

I drove the Jowett Javelin far more, around Putney in London, and around Bletchingly, Surrey. There, for some while, ‘The Arch’ (the Javelin owner’s neighbour) ministered unto his flock. But no, I have not driven a Chinese car.

M: You are seldom short of opinions about anything. Do you have any about China?

J: I do. But I am a little confused, by a mix of communist and capitalist takes, both of which, confusingly, make sense.

The best of the podcasts I came across is Lex Fridman interviewing Keyu Jin, which I transcribed to an article on my playpen site. Ms Jin’s words about the One Child Family, and mayors competing for GDP, are my two main takeaways. Plus, I can’t quite forget Deng and the cat.

M: