She liked and she'd be happy to see China with a woman leader lesbian perhaps but as our train Arat all through the tunnels under the great hall of the people and tenement square Most people told me they approved of the goings on above they were pleased to hear that cd being campaign against tigers flies and foxes would continue in that particular menagerie the tigers of the powerful officials who steal billions the line is a small time officials who extort hundreds and the foxes Well they're the ones who flee the country having stashed their money in tax havens the 2nd big thumbs up from my swaying focus group was busy doing things like that homes are for living in not for speculation Beijing is one of the world's most expensive cities and some stand on these trains for hours to get back to the only apartments they can afford there's no better way to the heart of ordinary Chinese citizens than to promise that you're going to deal with speculation actually doing it maybe harder one smartly dressed banker told me he was also a communist party member he said he traveled a lot and noticed the wealth gap in the us and Europe was much starker than in China I pointed out that in fact China is now one of the most unequal countries in the world and if that's not visible it's possibly because the poor have been pushed out of city centers but do you feel safe in Beijing he countered when I asked a tired fortysomething whether she would like more freedom she said America has more freedom but that doesn't make it better we should weigh up the pros and cons of different political system she observed. I think she meant it but just in case anyone is tempted to feel differently all the major t.v. Channels cleared that shed jewels to run Xi Jinping speech in full one China shopping mall said it used its 30000 screens to show the speech schools and even kindergarten classes lined their children up North Korean style to absorb the thought of their leader photos of babies in pets staring into space or mobile phones Greens went viral and not to be outdone China's biggest social media company Tencent launched an online game the most frenzied applause visiting Speech wins it's quite something when you stop to think that a lot of that speech was couched in turgid ideological language about the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics but on that subject I should explain that the Chinese characteristics are to distinguish China's socialism which works from the disastrous socialism with soffit characteristics which brought much of the communist world to ruin in the early 1990 s. Back when this subway was on the drawing board Moscow was the big brother of the socialist world it sent the engineers from its magnificent subway to teach little Beijing brother how to do it and then when the brothers fell out this underground was delayed for over a decade but history has moved on Beijing subway long ago over to London and New York in size and passenger numbers it doesn't have the chandelier is of the Moscow model but it's cheap efficient and 2nd only to Shanghai in scale and it has even bigger ambitions for the future that confidence and ambition is very much the mood of the moment in this town and I felt it from the Congress whole to the subway carriage. Carry Gracie has really witnessed China's development 1st hand our next stop is Pakistan where Owen Bennett Jones has been watching developments for years and compared to a decade ago he says Pakistan is enjoying a period of increasing stability the Pakistani Taliban have been pushed into Afghanistan and the number of attacks has dropped sharply and yet masses of life and death as well as brutal twists of fate still staple topics of dinner party conversation throughout his long life the late and very much lamented Abdul Sattar e.-d. Pakistan's best known philanthropist provided the nation with a whole range of public services all on the basis of voluntary donations most ambulances in Pakistan for example are 80 ambulances one of his many charitable deeds was putting cradles outside his offices all over the country every week and in some places nearly every night they are filled with unwanted babies babies whose mothers felt unable to keep them because of poverty or the fear of scandal e.-t. Set up an organization that would then get these findings fed and cared for as they waited for someone to adopt them but the cradles found everywhere high in the mountains of northern Pakistan lies the old princely state of Chitral it is a charmed charming place where the people are known for their gentleness and their smiles they play music they dance and they shun extremism it's remote rugged country raging rivers with light blue silty water cascade down steep mountain sides and foam brilliant white as they crash into huge smooth boulders on the river bed it has one of the highest snowy peaks on Earth and on the valley flaws deep green fields producing grapes and other fruits. I was at a dinner into trouble recently when the absence of these 80 cradles came up in the conversation I asked what happens to unwanted babies around here even if Chitral has a reputation as one of Pakistan's most peaceful places untouched by the war on terror it turns out that like everywhere else it has its dark secrets what happens they get left on the side of the road or even thrown in the river one woman told me they just held them in the river she said she had an arrangement with a doctor whereby he would tip or off when someone had a baby they couldn't keep and she would then arrange for the baby to be adopted instead it was then that one of the diners told the story of a girl from Bajaur that's one of Pakistan's tribal areas a couple of 100 kilometers away right on the Afghan border Bajaur is a place that is very much being cause in the war on terror the girl was not blessed with the best start in life her father ran a suicide bomb factory in the basement of his Madrid or religious seminary and he'd already sent her elder sister to blow ourselves up across the border in nearby Afghanistan when she was 6 a Pakistani air force helicopter attacked and destroyed the home of the girl from Bajaur she survived because she'd been told to go and fetch the family goat seeing the wreckage of her home she didn't dare go back and instead just run away she trekked through the wild territory of by jaw until eventually she ended up in a marketplace on the edge of the tribal area someone handed her into the police who set about questioning her who was she where did she come from where were her parents. Either because she couldn't explain where she lived or maybe because she didn't want to the girl told the police little but bit by bit has story emerged her home had been attacked by a helicopter she didn't want to go back there she knew all about suicide vests her sister had been a suicide bomber this left the police in a quandary the girl hadn't broken any laws so they had no reason to keep her in the cells but they could hardly just let it go right on to the streets to fend for herself it was then the girl from Bajaur had a lucky break someone who knew the police heard about the situation and offered to pay for her to live in an orphanage she's now doing well and reaching the age when the orphanage arranges for the children in its care to get married and settled down Pakistan's culture and the country's political violence have produced so many extreme situations babies abandoned in cradles infants hurled into torrents of ice cold water and babies saved from disaster and shown great love and care and as they discuss these extremes of good and bad fortune Pakistan is tend to agree on one point whether the story ends well or badly they was come up with the same explanation it's all a question of fate. Owen Bennett Jones now back from northern Pakistan you were listening to from our own correspondent on the b.b.c. World Service with me Pascal. Next to a brush and a bit of a lover with one of the world's minority faiths the Samaritans are an ethno religious group who can trace their roots back to 2 biblical tribes the word Samaritan means a Gandhian or keeper and that does seem to be how they see themselves as custodians of tradition other related faiths have forgotten although they now number less than a 1000 living between Israel and the Palestinian territories Leone McCarron finds the Samaritans he meets in the West Bank are anything but downcast inside the single concrete room is just enough space for 2 chairs a mirror and a broken pedestal fun and I'm instructed to sit down and lift up my chin sunlight floods in intensified by the thick glass of a sliding door and a young Palestinian with a chisel jaw runs his hand across my beard beside him is Benny much older swaddled in a jumper despite the heat and grinning shave it all off he says and what harm would fires up the electric razor you will look much better after this chuckles Benny this can be your close year with a Samaritans Benyamin to Dhaka Benny to his friends has an energy that belies his 70 years and he's a member of one of the oldest and smallest ethno religious sect in the world the Israel Samaritans my prior knowledge is limited to the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan So I've come to visit Benny to learn more about the contemporary status of his community we are a monotheistic faith and trace our lineage back through 127 generations in the holy land he begins our families are remnants of an ancient people. As Mohamed covers my face and shaving foam Benny tells me definitively that Samaritans are a distinct religion it is actually the root of all the other Abrahamic faiths He says Judaism Christianity Islam and even Druze and Behi to he admits that there are some similarities of course we follow the Torah and observe the Sabbath but our main difference from Judaism is in the location of the Holy of Holies Jews believe it is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem but we know it to be here on this mountain the mountain is called getting and it rises high above a sprawling city of Nablus in the heart of the West Bank Mohammed shops it's half way up the slope and the view from my chair is spectacular dense concrete city blocks Rissa cross the undulations of the valley and beyond Green Hills roll out to the horizon 350 Samaritans live near the summit of kerosene just below the spot where they believe Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac there are another $450.00 Samaritans in the lawn a suburb of Tel Aviv and these 2 communities comprise their entire population a grand total of just 801 Mohammed scrips phone from my jaw with terrifying speed and Benny fiddles with his own freshly trimmed moustache whilst fielding phone calls and Hebrew and Arabic in between he shouts to me in English I'm always busy he laughs I work 246 he smiles when I know the ease of his linguistic transitions we are also the guardians of the ancient Hebrew he says so most of us speak 4 languages language is symbolic of the unique and liminal position smartens hold in the Holy Land. We are in the middle between Israelis and Palestinians and we must be friends with both we don't take political sides says Benny I ask if their role is difficult but Benny replies that it is simply the situation and it is also an opportunity we can be a bridge of peace because both sides respect us that it transpires is why he brought me to the barbers Mohammed is a Muslim and an Arab ask him what he thinks I look up Mohammed who splashes pungent aftershave on my raw skin Samaritans are our brothers he tells me we have Christians in Nablus too and all the religions live together peacefully I get up to leave before you look like Hamas Mohamed laughs now all your Hollywood we step outside and I ask Benny if he ever worries about the fragility of his small community of course not he says and as if to prove it he says that our next stop will be an engagement party one of our young men his mind a beautiful girl from Ukraine she will become the 802nd Samaritan this is one of the ways in which the Samaritans are adapting to the modern world by allowing men to find new brides on the Internet we are the oldest face in the world but we're not stuck in the past when he tells me our numbers dropped from maybe a 1000000 in Roman times to just 120 individuals in the 1920 s. We survived that and Nol were thriving our future is bright he looks at me then Franz What is it I ask I think he looked better with a beard. Leon McCarron and next to a little known war or rather a forgotten footnote to the 1st World War which grew into a rather important chapter in the Russian Civil War and the revolution that followed Lucy Ashe meets the enthusiastic on a thing the evidence and finds out what modern Russians make of it. A series of high pitched wails as Alexis combs the forests with a metal detector the treasure isn't buried deep within half an hour he's got a shovel full of metal ammunition cartridges grenades and intact magazine from a louis machine gun and fragments of shells some the size of a man's fist this whole wood is filled with remnants of the fighting he says on the 30th of December 1918 the place where we're standing now was pounded with 1500 shells from the Bolshevik side. Those on the receiving end were British American and Canadian troops part of the multinational force sent to North Russia at the tail end of World War One some of the fiercest battles took place along the nearby railway line both sides fired from trenches an armored trains but what were these foreigners doing in the Russian Arctic and actually they didn't come up here to fight Russians after all they were on the same side for most of world war one but after Lenin and Trotsky signed a peace treaty with the Germans Western governments were nervous and wanted to divide the German army and maintain the Eastern Front ordinary soldiers were told little about their mission so many were astonished to find themselves dragged into Russia's nascent civil war fighting the Bolsheviks or ballers as they called them on the side of the whites Alexei and his mates spend many weekends at their camp not far from the tracks they've built a hut a small wooden chapel honoring the war dead and even a makeshift Banja where they relax in the steam after a hard day's digging and walk each other with but twigs Alexi is a journalist but his real passion is Battlefield archaeology almost singlehandedly he has on earth evidence of a forgotten war and constantly post his finds on social media he turned his small flat in our hunger ask for Archangel the regional capital into a museum of the Allied intervention until his wife gave him an ultimatum it's me or that rusty junk so he moved his forest beauty to his office where it's proudly displayed alongside flags posters and photographs. Crouching under a tree next to Alexey I must look at it like a bee keeper with black netting over my face the midges are a torment they fly around in the whining clouds and of turn my colleague your is blue jeans almost black despite my veil and the screen around my bed in the heart I wake up covered in it she red bumps Luckily there is one place the horrible insects don't go I crawl through a narrow muddy hole over a patch of snow even though it's mid summer and slither down into a large cavern using the light from my phone I look up and see ice crystals frosting some planks of wood above my head pretty cool isn't it says alexy we're in a well preserved dug out built by u.s. Troops nearly a century ago members of America's 339th Infantry Regiment many of them farm boys from Michigan sheltered here from both of their car Tillery conditions for the 14000 troops who ended up here were grim in winter temperatures could plunge down to minus 40 centigrade soldiers had to slog through wet marshes or frozen slippery piles on either side of the railroad front many got frostbite Mike Gravel's grandfather Clement in charge of a machine gun crew was decorated for bravery in a battle against the Bolsheviks at the very spot where Alexis set up camp my career tied recently from General Motors runs the polar bears Association in honor of the American troops who fought in North Russia like Alexei he devotes a lot of his spare time to keeping the memory of this little known conflict alive hardly anyone's heard about it he says because we withdrew in 1919 and came home with our tail between our legs nobody wanted to brag about it. Alexei blames the British for the ill fated adventure and believes it was even the catalyst for Russia's civil war the sun never set on your empire he tells me Britain had a very advanced invasion mentality Winston Churchill Secretary of State for War at the time was certainly more enthusiastic about the intervention then President Woodrow Wilson he later complained that had he been better supported he might have been able to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle next to a burger bar on Main Street Troitsky Presby act there's an object inside a person x. Box it's a mark 5 British tank displayed to celebrate the victory of the Reds in the Civil War Most passers by assume it's a World War 2 tank and can't tell me much about it but one woman in a pink baseball cap gives it to me straight yes I know exactly what that is it's there to remind people it's better not to invade our country no doubt there and you can hear more from Lucy Ashe in a 3 part history of the intervention this week on the b.b.c. World Service but for now that's all from us here on from our own correspondent Do join us again next weekend. This is the b.b.c. World Service night close your eyes and listen. Stand is a powerful medium you can taking some of these markets. To rouse his space create a memorable character your dad to believe that I was here but that doesn't make it a real memory. And intriguing plot lines where there are more to go I told you. If you have a story to tell why not bring it to life in a radio play international playwriting competition is free so enter and open to anyone living outside the u.k. As the cash prize and a chance to visit London to see your play recorded live broadcast around the world it's the international play writing competition for details of how to enter and the terms and conditions go to b.b.c. World Service dot com slash radio play. Coming up on the cultural front line with me to.