I AM still suffering from jet-lag so forgive me if I ramble. But good grief, aren't we English quiet? I have just returned from a ten-day jaunt to China. It was years since I had last been, and much had changed. One thing hadn't. The Chinese remain an extraordinarily gregarious people.

You see it everywhere. On the streets, in taxis, on trains - even in railway waiting rooms.

On the sleeper train from Beijing to Nanjing my wife and I fell into conversation with everybody from members of the Jiangsu Province boxing team to a pair of Latin dance champions. In the waiting room at Nanjing Railway Station, a Chinese Army major plumped himself down next to us, leaned over to peer into my foreign face, then began cheerfully to interrogate us about where we lived, how we met, and what a particular phrase in an English article he was reading meant.

The thing about conversations in China is that, once started, everybody around gets involved too, chipping in with comments or laughter and then going off to tell their friends what was being said.

It can be overwhelming - until you relax and realise how fantastic it is to talk to people. So different from train journeys here where we retreat behind our newspapers to avoid embarrassing eye contact.

The difference between the reserved British and the gregarious Chinese is most obvious in the streets. In England, when night falls, we tend to retreat into our castles and occupy ourselves with TV. In China, people head for what they regard as their natural place of relaxation.

Chinese streets are wonderful in the evening. Last Thursday in Beijing we went for a meal in a city centre restaurant then afterwards, at 9pm, strolled around the shops. They were all open and all packed with busy, gossiping shoppers.

Just around the corner was an open-air food market. For half a mile the rows of stalls stretched, selling every kind of food you could imagine skewered on sticks. Frogs' legs, ducks' tongues, chicken's feet, fried seahorses, succulent grilled squid, skewered chunks of exotic fruit - it was all there, along with thousands of people out for a stroll, chat, and a bite to eat.

It's not just in the capital either. In Nanjing late one evening, we visited Fu Zi Miao, a touristy area around the canal where in ancient China beautiful courtesans paraded in boats for the delectation of Chinese scholars. There, threading our way through the crowds thronging the market stalls, we haggled down the price of a pair of fake leather gloves; picked up a job-lot of beautiful stones that on closer examination proved to be plastic - and enjoyed possibly the best meal I've ever had in a smoky little restaurant overlooking the canal.

On Sunday morning, still reeling with tiredness after the 21-hour journey home the day before, I walked around York. It was beautiful, calm and quiet in the late autumn sunshine - but the streets were deserted, and I missed the buzz of China.

I'm not saying we should have market stalls selling fried seahorse and ducks' tongues in Parliament Street - though I wouldn't object.

But how I wish we could reclaim the streets of York from their state of evening desertion and make them into places people want to be.

Despite the apparent failure of Thursday late-night shopping it should surely be possible. I can't believe we are really happier sealing ourselves up with our TV every evening.

But perhaps, being English, we are.

Updated: 10:56 Wednesday, November 19, 2003