Lindsey Hilsum on being taken up the river by the Chinese government

The Official Media Tour and the Banquet are time-honoured rituals of reporting in China which I had managed to avoid until this past week. But I wanted to do a story about the environmental consequences of the Three Gorges Dam, and it's hard to get access, so I signed up. The trip started in Yichang, the city nearest the dam, where we drove past dozens of new-build, European-style villas. Chinese nouveaux riches like names in English such as "Chateau Edinburgh" and "Fortune Golf", but someone in Yichang appears to have had an accident with an online dictionary, so several middle-class families will soon have an address in "French Amorous Feelings Business Street".

We gathered with several other foreign television crews in the lobby of the Peach Blossom Hill Hotel, next to two papier mâché reindeer wearing blue tinsel on their ankles. Photographs of previous visitors included Henry Kissinger and the Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, who appeared to have been wearing a spacesuit and airline eyeshades at the time.

The Banquet, we were told, was about to begin, so we made our way to a large room with a crystal-dripping chandelier in the centre, suspended from a faux-Michelangelo ceiling fresco painted with threatening-looking cherubs and fringed with Father Christmas pennants. Somehow Bessie Du, the trusty Channel 4 News producer, managed to get me off the top table - an essential act of charity because, as a vegetarian, I did not relish the thought of being closely observed by senior officials of the Yichang Com munist Party while I refused numberless courses of creatures, some of which seemed to be still swimming.

And so to the speeches. "Friends in the media, ladies and gentleman, goodnight!" began the translator promisingly. But, alas, it was not going to be over so quickly. Hydropower generation statistics had to be quoted in kilowatt hours and cargo data in ships per month. Environmental problems? What environmental problems?

"The negative impact caused by Three Gorges Dam such as environmental protection is also much better than forecast," explained an official, before offering a toast: "To the full success of this news-gathering activity!"

The following morning we embarked on the news-gathering activity. Foreign journalists, greatly outnumbered by officials and Chinese journalists, had one interest: access to the dam. But it is a time-honoured tradition that the media must first be dragged round facilities in which they have no interest at all, hence the visit to the Chinese Sturgeon Research Institute.

This was a sub-Damien Hirst-type experience, with many tanks of fish in formaldehyde and a large swimming pool containing half a dozen hulking monsters, presumably the only specimens still flapping, the rest having pegged it in the appalling pollution of the Yangtze.

Around this time Matt, our cameraman, was heard singing the latest Madonna hit, "Like a Sturgeon". Emboldened by the success of his wit, he recklessly entered into conversation with a Chinese journalist who asked him what he thought of the trip. He replied: "I was here three years ago and I'll be interested to see how much has changed."

This appeared in the following day's Chong qing Daily as, "Matt Jasper of Britain's Channel 4 News said: 'We did not expect the water to be so charmingly beautiful. After the damming of the river, we believed the water would turn the colour of soy sauce.'"

Finally, we were taken to the viewing point, from which the dam was faintly visible through a dense fog, then on to the dam itself, and finally to the turbine room. At each spot the cameramen had just about enough time to set up and get a few shots before a stout, chain-smoking man with gnome-like features would clap his hands and shout: "Zoule! Zoule!" - "Let's go!"

At this point, one correspondent faked terminal illness and was driven away. The rest of us got on to the Victoria 7, a tourist boat, and sailed up the Yangtze. The organisers had decided that we would spend the next three days on the water. The programme consisted primarily of "Have breakfast on the aboard", "Have lunch . . .", etc, with brief stops to visit vocational education centres and the like. It sounded a bit like those prison ships David Blunkett once planned to moor off Felixstowe. Bessie was on her mobile masterminding our escape.

After about three hours floating gently along, we disembarked and got on the bus to Xingshan, a new town built to accommodate some of those whom the rising waters have forced to move. As we toured the sewage treatment plant, Bessie broke the bad news to the organisers, who took it with good grace, demanding only that we return booklets they had distributed at the start of the tour.

The getaway car was revving outside. We loaded our luggage and jumped in - off to meet environmentalists, and villagers whose houses had been damaged in landslides caused by water pressure from the dam. To get the other side of the story, in short: an entirely different kind of news-gathering activity.

Lindsey Hilsum is China correspondent for Channel 4 News

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