A bewildered Westerner struggles in Beijing

I went to Beijing for a month this spring to teach, and it was my first time in Asia, let alone China. It may sound jejune to readers intimate with the Orient but for me, at least initially, the experience was bizarre. You can go through a whole Western education without learning much at all about China, and – perhaps naively – I was shocked at how much of a shock it was.

The cultural differences were sometimes more unsettling for their smallness, pervading the tiniest details and giving a sense of dislocation I'd thought exclusive to David Lynch movies and Kafka. Even the inanimate can feel aggressive; it seems telling that when you press the "close doors" button in a lift they close immediately and with lightning speed, unlike in England where I'm fairly sure those buttons aren't really connected to anything.

The social norms can be alienating too; on my first night I bought cigarettes from a man who seemed genuinely angry that I was bringing him custom, but was perhaps just vehemently anti-smoking despite working in a shop with more cigarettes than I'd ever seen in one place. On my second, I discovered that other Chinese salespersons (of both sexes) liked to tell me I'm handsome to try and sell me things. Both reluctance and flattery were extremely effective tactics.

But it's the major differences that are with you all the time, and one of them is literally pervasive – the pollution. On a bad day, you can't see the sun no matter how brightly it's shining, and you can (perhaps unadvisedly) look directly at its aura through a haze of shimmering airborne particles.

You can taste it in the air: sweet, sickly, frazzled ozone, like burning rubber, and it becomes impossible to tell whether you're smoking a cigarette or not. Smoking might even be better for you, since at least there's a filter. Masks are necessary and, after a few days breathing in the smog, one begins to understand why hawking and spitting on the street are ubiquitous.

Many articles have been written amply covering this issue, which is caused by the ring of factories (producing most of our plastic) on the outskirts of the city, and has recently begun to rise in social and political prominence, particularly since the US Embassy in Beijing started to release figures for the pollution levels. Chinese government officials have claimed variously that it's caused by burning straw, by smoking meat outside ... anything but the factories. Nevertheless, the measures they took to reduce pollution for both the Beijing Olympics and the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)summit involved ordering all the factories to halt production (and, perhaps redundantly, stopping car traffic in the city completely), as well as firing water cannons to create artificial clouds (the rain brings down the pollution). The atmosphere cleared completely, revealing China Blue skies (sorry) which faded as soon as the summit finished.

"APEC blue" has since become an expression in Chinese to mean a fleeting wonder. There's a further joke in English that it stands for "Air Pollution Evidently Controllable". But the daunting atmosphere can sometimes be a mistake of perspective, which I began to realise over the course of the month. Many people I've spoken to find it derogatory to the state of the air or the healthcare in their country when Chinese tourists sport masks, but it's exactly the opposite; it is, in fact, extremely polite. Many Chinese people wear masks not to protect themselves but to protect others; they wear them because they themselves are ill.

This was an object lesson (and an abject one) in the total ignorance of my former interpretation, and over the course of my visit my comfort and delight in the city increased with my understanding.

Take another instance: the metro. The metro is wild. At rush hour, there are lots of little day-glo minders (mostly, it seemed, women) who are constantly shouting (actually shouting) two things over and over: 1) Allow passengers off the train before trying to board, and 2) Don't queue directly in front of the doors.

No one pays them any mind; it's an absolute free-for-all. As soon as the doors open, people try to cram their way in while others try to cram their way out, and it's merely a question of which wave is stronger – often as the tide turns those people trying to get off are crammed back on, and you occasionally hear someone squeal as they are spun like a top by the ruck of bodies.

Then the little day-glo guys push those people at risk of getting their noses caught between the doors into the train, leaning forward bodily as they unabashedly manhandle you, fitting the maximum possible number of people into each carriage and allowing the train to depart. At first it seems zoological.

But it's just the way it is – for the next train will be equally packed, and you have to get to work. If this happened in the West, there would be angry men and women arguing; some highly strung young thug might lash out at another, but there they deal with it with stoicism and equanimity.

The approach to getting in at all costs might seem childish – in Chinese offices, if there's an email circular about cake, everyone immediately gets up from their desks and rushes to it, cutting off as big a slice as they want without any of our niceties about divvying it up, or refusing seconds because you don't want to seem greedy, or ensuring everyone gets a piece. But it's not childish – just much more frank. The same simple acceptance is required when crossing the road, which necessitates crossing oneself first, then looking in all directions at once – excluding up but including down, because that is where many of the Chinese stood in relation to me.

David Foster Wallace (rightly, I think) wrote that ours is an "age where ironic self-consciousness is the one and only universally recognised badge of sophistication", and this Chinese sincerity was therefore refreshing, even when I was pressed up into somebody's armpit on the metro (or, more likely, they were pressed up into mine).

The lessons I learned were brought home by the pupils I taught. One phrase I heard used over and over to describe those they admired was "So-and-so is kind to everyone". In the West, morality is often codified into laws or commandments, usually prohibitive. But this phrase struck me as the real essence of moral living; and without our greedily reciprocative "as you would be done by". Everyone I met was kind to me.

Editor's note: This is a travel piece in the tradition of Bill Bryson's Notes On A Small Island which was voted as the most popular book of all time about Britain. In the book he pokes fun at the British mercilessly to illustrate his perverse love for the country. As this wasn't fully appreciated by all audiences, the first paragraph was removed.

Field Guide

Where to stay: Shuangjing is a very relaxed area east of the centre with a significant community of ex-pats. For a more "authentic" experience, rent a room in one of the Hutongs – the old aristocratic mansions that were divvied up with the collapse of the feudal system into smaller apartments and have recently become trendy.

Where to drink: Hidden House in San Li Tun; the entrance hallway looks like a dead end, until you find the button to activate the secret entrance behind a sliding bookcase. Great cocktails and a particularly large selection of whiskeys and gins.

What to pack: Your favourite coffee and even a cafetiere – it's impossible to get a good cup of coffee, and don't expect any milk other than UHT.