I settled myself in the back seat of the taxi and asked the big square-faced driver to take me to the Shenyang Museum. Turning round and showing all his misshapen teeth in a wide grin, he informed me that he was an Emperor. At least that was what I understood, as he spoke Chinese with a strong Northeastern accent, leaving out all the consonants.

Any doubts were resolved when he passed me a Polaroid picture of himself, dressed in a dragon-embroidered yellow robe and red-tasselled conical hat, the standard court dress of a Qing Emperor. As this was 2003, and the Qing dynasty fell in 1911, I knew he must be jesting. Besides, the last Emperor of China, made famous by Bertolucci’s film, died in 1967. I liked this jovial ‘Emperor’.

Two months of living in the remote mountain city of Tonghua meant I didn’t yet know that every tourist site in northeast China has its costume rack and photographer, so tourists that can dress up and be photographed as members of the Manchurian Qing Dynasty . This particular taxi-driver turned out to be an Emperor of sorts - the Emperor of swindlers.

I had been looking forward to my first ‘proper’ holiday since I’d come to work in China, partly because Tonghua had almost no in historical sites, apart from the Daoist monastery on Yuhuang (Jade Emperor ) Park.

For all the rustic charm and difference from southeast London, I hadn’t come to China to look at mountains and watch peasants drive oxen about on the hillsides, the scene that met my eyes each day when I woke up in my living quarters. For years in London I’d been reading about China’s 5,000 year history and translating ancient texts at evening classes. I was eager to see some of the remaining physical evidence.

October 1st was National Day in China, and brought a week’s a holiday for every Chinese worker. It was our first real opportunity to leave the peaceful Tonghua landscape of green hillsides and slow-moving river. Pleasant and restful as it was to live and work in this idyllic setting, five miles or so from the city itself, we were eager to experience something of the China we glimpsed in ‘Round China’ documentaries on TV.

The Manchu invaders who founded the Qing dynasty chose Shenyang as their capital and built a palace and , in time, tomb complexes. According to my guidebook, the tombs and pagodas were scattered on the outskirts, so I had decided to start at the more local museum. The Qing Emperors later moved to Beijing where, not unlike our own Royal Family, they hankered after their ancestral pursuits of hunting expeditions and horseback riding. They kept up the Shenyang ‘Balmoral’ for their holidays but since the Cultural Revolution the city had developed into the region’s foremost industrial centre.

I had pooh-poohed the warnings of my ‘Old China Hand’ American colleague Joseph, about the dangers lying in wait for lone women travellers. I had been to China alone before, admittedly only for a week in foreigner-friendly Shanghai, or when I taught for a month in Zhejiang Province, for the most part escorted between hotel and school. Besides, an elderly Franciscan monk’s idea of what was suitable for a woman traveller today was surely out of date. If I’d been young and pretty like my UK colleague Katharine I might have been concerned, but nobody would bother a grey-haired foreigner. He was reassured when I said I would stay in a suitably upmarket hotel – the Shenyang Holiday Inn, which I booked on the Internet.

I also ignored the raised eyebrows of my office colleagues. I already knew their opinons about leaving their home city, with its sheltering hills. After all, I would only be gone four days.

Shenyang has roughly the same sized population as London but ten times the traffic chaos and a lot more pollution. The temperature inside the taxi, as it made slow progress through the morning crush, soon became a torment.

The cab already had a female in a short red skirt in the seat beside the driver. I thought she must be his daughter or girl-friend, to be dropped off en route, but she was another passenger, going in quite the opposite direction, which I only realised when we passed a park which, according to the map on my knee, lay in the opposite direction to the museum.

I should have realised all was not well when he waved a cigarette at me and casually asked ‘Keyi?’ (‘Permission?’), which never happened in Tonghua. I was so beguiled by his apparent friendliness and the photograph he showed me that I agreed, and the pair of them proceeded to light up. At least he opened his window. All the time he drove, with one hand on the wheel, he chatted affably and he even picked up another passenger. After twenty minutes I told him it would have been quicker to walk, and he answered with the Chinese equivalent of ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist’ and ‘Kuai dao le! Kuai dao le!’ (‘We’re nearly there’)

When we finally arrived at a spot where people were milling around a gate in a red wall, and I asked the price, he pointed at the meter and said ‘Ni kan !’(You can see!’). The correct charge, according to my guidebook, was 7 yuan for the first four kilometres and the place was only about 3 kilometres on the map from the hotel. The meter read 50 yuan. By this time, though, I was just anxious to get out, so I paid up and put it down to experience.

Next day came an unexpected chance for revenge.

I had decided to go by taxi to see a tomb in the appropriately named Beiling (North Tomb) Park; this time, however, I would ask the doorman at the hotel to get an estimate of the fare before I got in. Taxi-drivers are wary of offending hotel doormen, who can prevent them driving up under hotel awnings,losing the chance of rich pickings from westerners, even though not all were as easily duped as I was.

I could hardly believe it when I saw the same taxi-driver hanging about the hotel entrance. The doorman, stern-faced in a long green coat with brass buttons and epaulettes, looked on as I said loudly to the driver in Chinese, ‘Do I get a free ride today?’.

The driver shuffled his feet and gave a short burst of loud but nervous laughter. The customers at a nearby fruit-stall paused to listen. Glancing at the doorman, the driver asked me what I meant.

‘Well, you over-charged me so much yesterday I thought it must include journeys for the whole week!’. Whilst the fruit-stall people laughed, he scowled and grumbled under his breath, as the doorman waved his arm to indicate he should remove his taxi from the forecourt. I almost felt sorry for him, as all his swagger dissolved, like an Emperor who had just lost the Mandate of Heaven.