An overnight plane journey can lull me into a state of permanent somnambulism with my thoughts hovering somewhere between the real and the imaginary (helped by a few glasses of crisp sauvignon blanc!) Last night on the final leg of a three week journey that involved nine flights and a long overland haul on a dust road, my mind was probably even more susceptible to hallucinatory thoughts. At the airport bookshop I’d hurriedly picked up Alex Smith’s Drinking from the Dragon’s Well on a whim. The title appealed and it had Chinese images on the cover (I’m a complete Sinofile,...