Confucius says...

Confucius says life is full of obstacles when your mum is wheelchair bound because she fell into a toilet.

It's a rough translation but is amazingly accurate given our experience today. In older establishments in China ladies toilets consist of a basin in the floor. Without wishing to go into details mum slipped in such a toilet and...well...injured her knees. It was OK yesterday but today was painful to the point where we needed to use some of Meng's family's hospital contacts to order a wheel chair to allow mum to enjoy our trip to Confucius's home and the temple devoted to him.

Confucius's city is one of Chinas best kept secrets. A site of a similar importance to the Forbidden City but only really visited by native Chinese people, Qufu is off the beaten track – away from airport connections.

We felt very honoured to be there and were not taken for granted by the locals and visitors (a few of whom took photos of my dad and me – either as handsome men or western freaks – we weren't sure which). Qufu represents traditional China – the kind you see in Kung Fu movies but actually exists in a very few enclaves. The temples in Qufu were lessons in Architectural composition (if not disabled access) and I was left wishing that I could bring my students here to learn a thing or two about buildings.

And then, of course, more food and too much Chinese rice wine. I'm writing this with a growing hang-over and starting to realise the Meng's uncles are a bad influence on me.