In Kashgar, the furthest south-western city of China, for dinner we went to Chini Bagh (Chinese Garden), once a famous venue of international intrigues. It was the residence of British India’s representative in Kashgar during the Great Game rivalry between Imperial Britain and the Tsarist Russia in the 19th century. A most charming building and evocative of nostalgia for British visitors who flocked there, Chini Bagh now seemed totally out of place. It was flanked on one side by a plaza hosting one of the biggest statutes of Mao I had seen in China -at a height of 60 feet.