I am the Chairman of Lyon Equipment Limited, a company I founded in the 1970s. My Fellowship was for exploration, leading a team to explore and map caves in the Guanxi region of China. Our UK team joined up with Chinese colleagues from the Geology Department of Guilin University. We were also accompanied by a television crew from Beijing.

The main purpose was to find and record some of the amazing caves, but at the same time to learn from the people we met. These could be split into three distinct groups. Firstly, our local contacts. We were in the poorest part of China, and rural life had not really changed for hundreds of years. We saw and lived 'old China'. Secondly, the academics from the university. The young students were impatient for change and contemptuous of the 'old men' running the country. (This was a few months before the Tiananmen Square massacre.) Thirdly, the film crew, who constantly reminded us that we were not seeing the 'real' developing China.

Working and living with them all, we saw the self-confidence of an ancient culture about to become a dominant influence once more.