As Julian Cole is away this week, STEPHEN LEWIS takes a look at Dean's Park behind the Minster.

Tucked away behind York Minster is one of those quiet, secluded little corners where, even on a Bank Holiday, you can always escape the crowds.

For some reason, not many people seem to go to Dean's Park. They throng into the Minster, congregate in front of the great West Door, hurry up and down Petergate and Duncombe Place.

But go through the iron railings beside the Minster and you could be in another world. Elderly couples sun themselves on the few benches, and here and there a younger person sits reading on the grass.

I found myself there on Monday. I'd decided, since it was the Bank Holiday, to do touristy things. I'd walked the city walls and climbed the Minster Tower. From there, looking down, I thought how tranquil Dean's Park looked in the afternoon sunshine: and so I went.

At the back of the park there is a section of ancient wall, mellowed by the sunlight. It's a remnant of the medieval Archishop's Palace: and in 1987 it was restored as a memorial to the dead of the Army's Second Division, 'raised in Portugal at Albuera, 18 June 1809.'

It's a beautiful spot for a memorial to those who gave their lives for their country: quiet and tranquil, a place for peaceful reflection.

The names and dates commemorated there read like a roll-call of honour: Waterloo, 1812; Sebastopol, 1855; The Somme, 1916; Ypres, 1917; Kohima, 1944.

Lest we forget, I thought... And then one name leaped out and hit me, like a shock of cold water. Peking, 1860.

I know about Peking, 1860, you see.

Between 1988 and 1993, I lived for four years in China. The first two of those years I was in a town called Qujing: a town in Yunnan Province in China's remote south-west near the border with Burma.

I taught conversational English and English Literature to students at a rural teacher training college.

Most of my students were the children of peasants. Their homes were mud-brick houses in tiny villages perched amid the paddy fields, connected to each other and the outside world only by mud tracks. I stayed with them during my holidays, met their families, slowly got to know them. And they began to tell me stories.

One of these stories was a folk myth handed down from generation to generation among the peasant villages around the Burmese border. It was a story about giant, red-headed devils with hairy faces and long arms, who could point at you and make you drop dead without coming near.

They were terrible, those devils: though just a distant folk memory now. The stories were told to me simply and in friendship, without any hint of blame. And yet still I felt shame.

Because those devils were the Ying Guo Ren, you see: the English.

What I was hearing were stories, passed down the generations by word of mouth, from the days when English soldiers invaded China to force the Chinese to buy opium.

There were two Opium Wars; one in the 1840s, one in the 1860s. It was mainly Chinese sea-ports that were attacked: but in 1860 the English entered the Chinese capital Peking, too. Presumably at some point they also attacked across the border from British-controlled Burma.

Britain and its Western allies were victorious in both wars. By the end, Hong Kong had been ceded to Britain, the rest of China had been carved up between greedy foreign powers: and a once proud nation had been broken and humbled.

It wasn't those forgotten English soldiers' fault, of course. They were just doing what they were told: fighting for their country. And anyway, it's just dry history, now: a footnote in the textbooks.

Until I went to live in China and heard those stories about the terrible Englishmen, that is. And until I saw that plaque in Dean's Park.