Though I was neither born nor raised there - and only lived in the city for three years - I always thought of it as my hometown.

The minute I step on the Hong Kong-Beijing train in Hung Hom, I am back in the motherland. In his tongue-twirling Beijing Putonghua, a smiling train attendant asks me to hand in my ticket and gingerly inserts it in a slotted folder - a strange mainland rail ritual that has always baffled me. He then hands me a card with the number of my bed in the sleeper carriage.

As the train wobbles through the green rolling mountains and winding rivers of rural Guangdong, I walk into the restaurant car, hoping for yummy Beijing dumplings.

I am the only customer. A team of train attendants clad in dirty white uniforms are smoking and yacking away. I am told the kitchen will be open soon.

"We can't kick you out just because you aren't eating,'' a young man says and hands me a can of Tsingtao. He's Wang, the chief of staff. Sipping the warm beer, I open a book by Lao She, one of China's most renowned writers.

In an essay, Missing Beiping, written in 1936, Lao She rated his hometown as a better place than London, Paris, Rome and Istanbul.

"Those old city walls overgrown by red sour date shrubs!'' he wrote. "Wherever you go [in Beijing], it's not too crowded nor too quiet. Even the smallest hutongs house courtyards and trees; even the widest squares are still near markets and residential areas ... the point is not having the most beautiful architecture but to keep the space around it.''

Hutongs. I remember: Sunny Beijing afternoons spent cycling through a labyrinth of narrow alleyways when I was a university student between 1988 and 1991. The skies were high and blue, the trees deep green.

I ask Wang if there are any hutongs left. "Only those around the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower,'' he replies nonchalantly. "And those behind Tiananmen still remain. Others have all been demolished.''

Wang and his team seem like the last remaining workers of an old-style state-owned enterprise. He's been serving on this train route since it opened in 1997 and earns just a little more than 1,000 yuan (HK$940) a month, lower than the average Beijing salary. "We serve the people,'' he laments.

Arriving at the Beijing Western railway station is an appetizer for heartbreak. Beggars and migrant workers lie among their belongings and the rubbish at the gate. A little boy sits alone in front of a giant TV screen watching adverts and picking his nose.

My taxi snails through traffic. With a cigarette dangling from his lips, the driver entertains me with his running commentary on Chinese politics: "Look at this stupid cyclist. These days it's about how to be selfish. The government has kicked us into the water. Some drown, those who can swim can barely keep their heads above water. There are no good people left.''

Dust from giant grey buildings and highways, lots of them, blows at us. Lao She's old city walls are long gone, so are his beloved "spacious spots.'' Every building is massive and every road is wide.

Dining at Dazhaimen Restaurant in Zhongguancun, the high-tech Silicon Valley of Beijing, is a must if you want to catch the city's vibes - both ancient and modern.

Bowing to our party at the gate of a Qing Dynasty courtyard are two rows of young men and women dressed in colorful satin Manchu-era costumes. "Ning ji xiang (wish you luck)!'' They shout the royal Qing greeting and hand us glossy pamphlets introducing the restaurant's history.

The restaurant, refurbished from the former residence of a Qing Dynasty prince, is set in a jungle of soaring office blocks housing software companies, banks and computer retailers.

A young girl holding a lantern leads us through a narrow garden path. "This pond is 10 kilometers deep. It doesn't dry up in the drought nor does it overflow in floods,'' she dutifully intones over a water hole. Our bellies are already hurting from laughing over her words as we enter the packed restaurant.

More stomach aches are ahead at what is billed Qing palace cuisine. Served by pretty girls dressed as Manchurian concubines, the highlight is stewed camel's hooves on a bed of vegetables and scallops. The feet are gooey, rubbery and fatty. Perhaps the real reason those imperious Man-churians finally lost control of China was because we Han Chinese ate all their camels' feet.

The next day I meet a real Manchurian, belonging to a small tribe of the last remaining pure-blooded race. She and her environmentalist husband have organized a get-together with a mutual writer friend to welcome me back to town. The writer bails out at the last minute, saying he's in a hurry to leave Beijing. But after demolishing 10 long-necked bottles of local Yanjing beer in the couple's flat, we suddenly realize the writer was "escorted'' out of Beijing by police because it's the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. It's an annual state-enforced ritual for him after being released from jail for the support he gave to the student protesters in 1989.

"I believe the June 4 verdict will come out in my lifetime,'' says the environmentalist, who is optimistic about change in China.

I survived the massacre 16 years ago and this is my first time in Beijing for the anniversary. On the night of June 4, I go to the square. It's 11pm. The only people there are policemen on patrol. There are also, strangely, two buses parked at the foot of the Monument to People's Heroes. Creepy.

Too scared to walk into the square, I ask the taxi driver to slowly circle the nearly deserted streets.

The next day is even creepier. Inside the square I pass Mao Zedong's mausoleum. At its gate a long line of people wait under the scorching sun to view his corpse. "Please do not shout, do not spit, and do not litter. You should show respect!'' a male voice shouts through loudspeakers.

People still turn up for these obligatory patriotic acts. A passing photographer tells me the crowds are even bigger every morning for the raising of the national flag.

At the foot of the monument, adorned with red flags, tired-looking soldiers sit drinking water on the two buses that I saw the previous night. A few more guard the steps leading up to the monument. A police van slowly snakes through crowds of tourists.

Inside the Forbidden City, behind the red walls on Tiananmen, a group of young soldiers roars as they practice their kung fu kicks, thrusting electrical prods and big plastic shields in the air. A few tourists look on. The chilling part is not the riot police gear on display but that the soldiers are giggling. So are some of the tourists.

My last visit to Beijing was in May 1999 to cover nationalistic students protesting outside the American and British embassies against the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Then a few demonstrators reported me to police and threw rocks at me after learning I was a journalist working for the foreign media.

It is not all bleak, though. "Do not lose hope,'' a journalist friend says on this trip as he takes me to Big Beard Ma, a Muslim restaurant by a highway in northern Beijing.

``The Internet, no matter how much the government tries to crack down, is making China a very different place these days. And the NGO [non-government organization] workers and journalists are pressuring the government to listen,'' he says firmly.

``China will become a civil society one day. It's unstoppable.''

His articles have pressured two premiers to crack down on corruption. His latest gig is lecturing in universities on human rights.

When I visit Peking University, most of the students are studying English by Weiming Lake. Nearby is the grave of Edgar Snow, the American journalist who lectured at the university and told the world about the Long March. The famous Triangular Place noticeboards, once adorned with the pro-democracy posters that gave rise to the Tiananmen protests, are today layered with advertisements for MBA courses.

This is today's Beijing, a multi-layered society with all manner of things happening under the nose of Communist Party apparatus.

Returning to my thoughts of Lao She, I take an American buddy to the Lao She Teahouse, a pseudo-traditional structure on a busy road near Tian-anmen Square. I was hoping for a museum dedicated to this father of modern Chinese literature who committed suicide after Red Guards tortured him in 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. One of Lao She's most notable works was a stage play, The Tea House, portraying the changes in Beijing between the Qing Dynasty and the Civil War.

My American friend asks the waiter to bring him Lao She's favorite tea. ``Our teahouse has nothing to do with Lao She,'' replies the waiter bluntly.

Despite the non-connection with Lao She, this is the place to see Beijing's traditions on display. Run by a private entrepreneur who made his money from selling tea on the street, the teahouse is a magnet for celebrities. Recently, Lien Chan, president of Taiwan's Kuomingtang, and his entourage visited. Most tables in the main hall are covered with brass plaques stating where other dignitaries once sat. Our table was former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's.

On the stage is a re-enactment of Beijing culture: Acrobats, opera singers and stand-up comics show off their talents for a predominantly local audience. Most entertaining is tea-pouring kung fu: A group of young men prance about to disco music waving brass teapots with long sword-like spouts.

``This is to show the masculine beauty of tea!'' announces the MC.

All the so-called traditional Beijing spots I see seem to have taken on a modern twist. We later visit Hohai, my favorite quiet backwater, where old men used to play chess by the water and walk their birds. My sister warns me that this is now the city's latest ``in'' spot. The lake here is rimmed with outdoor cafes redolent with the odors of tofu and garlic chive cakes. Outdoor bars are crowded with foreign tourists and locals from all age groups and a glass of beer costs a staggering 50 yuan.

We stroll around the lake passing a group of old men discussing computers in their musical Beijing twang. A young man practices his saxophone by the water. A local jazz band plays in a restaurant. Couples waltz in a small square to old Soviet revolutionary anthems and Chinese folk songs.

My American friend asks me if I still hold negative feelings towards today's Beijing as we stroll in the hutongs surrounding Hohai.

At least the traditional courtyards here have survived the waves of demolition in Beijing. Some have been bought up by wealthy locals who renovate them for homes.

``Oh no, how can I have hard feelings towards Beijing?'' I say.

It's true love, actually. No matter how ugly she becomes, my passion for the city, her history and, most of all, the compassion and intellect of her res-idents, is undimmed, I tell my Yankee buddy.

I have told my Hong Kong friends I will never return to the mainland to live because I can't even Google properly here. During this visit, I ask my Beijing friends if they have read anything on the Internet about Hong Kong compatriots staging a candlelit vigil for June 4 again this year.

The answer is no.

A few days later I return to Hong Kong and once again surf freely to find that 45,000 people gathered in Victoria Park on the June 4 anniversary.

I do hope my fellow Beijingers will be able to Google properly soon.

Regardless, I'll be back.