Peter Phillips is mugged by a gang of Praetorius-loving six-year-old girls in China

We have read about the remarkable opening up of China in recent years: how many people live there and how good they are at business, perhaps finding the prospect of them rushing into our world rather daunting. However, a part of this process has been the sudden curiosity there for western art-forms. Not long ago the idea of a tour of China by a European early music group would have seemed completely fantastical. What space was there in a country which for many years had allowed only eight ‘model plays’ to be publicly staged — all of them about the achievements of the army — for the votive antiphons of Tallis, or the Passions of Bach?

Not everyone in that vast country is ready for such delicacies yet, but a light has begun to shine. The most difficult hurdle for the authorities to overcome was not in music, or even music with sacred words (which were still banned when we visited in 2000), but in the distribution of western films.