Globalisation in action: Beijing - twinned with Brent Cross

The High Street has come to China and is part of a retail revolution in a country where a burgeoning middle class is keen to spend its new money in shops with a decidedly British bearing. Britain is the largest European investor in China and Mothercare the latest brand from the UK to set up in the coveted China market. Clifford Coonan spent a day wandering along Britain's high street - Beijing Style.

10am Tesco

There is a little corner of Beijing, near the intersection of the Baiziwan Road and the Fourth Ring Road that is forever British. Except for the live turtles. The familiar, solid livery of Tesco straddles Chinese characters on the side of buses used to transport the shoppers to the UK chain's first Chinese outlet. Just as the whole society has embraced Socialism with Chinese characteristics, this is British consumerism with Chinese characteristics.

Tesco has been an aggressive new player in the Chinese grocery business. It bought a 50 per cent stake in Hymall, a leading grocery brand under the Taiwan-based Ting Hsin International, in 2004, and increased its stake to 90 per cent in December. The company has 45 Hymall stores in China, all of which will change their signs to Hymall Tesco and compete with France's Carrefour, the Germany-based retailer Metro and the American giant Wal-Mart, as well as the local retailer Jingkelong.

Like everything else in Beijing with just over one year until the 2008 Olympics, the Tesco store is under construction and much of the building is wrapped in green anti-dust netting. Upon entering, Tesco makes a very similar first impression to Carrefour, which has been in Beijing a lot longer. The way in takes you through a mini-mall - smells of fried chicken waft from the inevitable KFC, as The Beatles warble "Let it be" over the intercom.

Just before the entrance is a beauty salon offering pedicures - surely that should be at the exit, no? There is a naïve, and unsophisticated dimension to the way the shop is laid out.

The next stop is an enormous counter filled with booze and fags. Alongside some foreign brands of cognac stand dozens of varieties of the domestic favourite, Moutai. And a wall of locally made cigarettes - China produces more than 600 brands.

Next stop is an enormous vat of rice, at least eight foot by eight foot and four feet high. Is there a more Chinese symbol than this? "I like it. It's convenient; they have lots of things to buy. And I live nearby," said one middle-aged woman, who did not want to give her name. She was scooping up huge quantities of rice from the vat into a sack.

Food is a Chinese obsession - a common greeting is "Che fan ma?" meaning, "Have you eaten?" "Fan" is "rice", which shows just how central rice is to Chinese culture and language.

The fresh food section is spectacular, dozens of kinds of fish swimming around their tanks; full tanks of shrimp; squid and fresh fish displayed on ice, upon which white-coated assistants regularly shovel fresh ice. And then there are the turtles. When Tesco opened under its own brand name in January, animal rights activists accused it of cruelty by selling live turtles. The animals experience terrible agony when their shell, limbs and entrails are cut away, but they are left alive for hours, the activists said. The turtles do look rather forlorn, it has to be said, squashed against the edge of their glass enclosures, although I've never seen a cheerful one.

The activists face serious cultural opposition here - turtles and tortoises are a regular feature in the cuisine. Rare turtles can cost thousands of pounds.

Just as I am starting to despair of finding anything familiar in these aisles, I come to a section of Tesco's own-brand goods. Assam tea bags, Nice biscuits, Tikka and Balti cooking sauce, spaghetti Bolognese sauce, mint jelly, orange marmalade and sandwich pickle. These all come across as being British goods but it is a sign of how multicultural the UK has become when Indian and Italian delicacies have entered the culinary language so completely.

My pickle purchased, for 15.90 yuan, or £1.02, I head off to B&Q.

Midday at B&Q

The smell of lumber, linseed oil and power tools, coupled with the warehouse feel that DIY stores have, greets you as you enter the Wukesong Road branch of B&Q in western Beijing's Haidian district.

On the way in there is a sign listing the names and showing the photographs of six members of staff who speak English. This is an unprecedented level of customer service for China, and it continues inside, where I am greeted every second step by a smiling employee who says "Ni hao", hello. The employees do seem to outnumber the shoppers by six-to-one, but it's early. B&Q has 60 shops in 27 cities and employs more than 10,000 workers. It plans to increase the number of outlets to 100 within three years. B&Q is fitting out the homes of China's newly wealthy.

I'm looking for some Polyfilla. My pride won't allow me to ask one of the smiling English-speakers for help, so I muddle through in Chinese, resorting regularly to my electronic dictionary and eventually get some "fill-wall-putty". It's in a tub, but I want a dispenser. No problem, the helpful woman in the polo shirt finds it, with the help of about five colleagues who are falling over each other to help.

It's hard to believe that it is just 30 years since the end of the Cultural Revolution, where all forms of decoration were seen as bourgeois decadence and the follies of capitalist fellow-travellers. And it's only a quarter century since the country began to open up to the outside world. Now Chinese households can have Italian marble tiles, Finnish saunas and tasteful eco-lighting all the way from Eindhoven.

1.30pm Vineyard Café

Lunch, in an English caff. I get back into a cab and head half way back the way I came to the Dongcheng area, with its historic, beautiful, but rapidly disappearing, ancient hutong laneways. Vineyard doesn't look like a greasy spoon with Formica tables and big pots of tea. Where it resembles an English caff is that it sells a lot of English goods.

And the centrepiece of the menu is the Full English Breakfast. This has become famous in Beijing, largely by word of mouth. Olly Stedall from London, one of the three owners, is happy to talk about the menu. "We found a decent pork sausage from a Beijing supplier, and the bacon is locally produced European-style bacon. And we have Heinz baked beans." Behind him in the fridge lurk bottles of IPA, Abbot Ale, Old Speckled Hen and Belhaven Scottish Ale. "We're also getting in Branston Pickle and smoked haddock for fish pies," said Stedall, who has been in Beijing for six years. "Crisps are tricky to find, by the time they get here, they're past their sell-by date as they can get delayed in customs."

3pm Goodbaby

Beijing is still smog free. The Chinese childcare group has just has just signed a joint-venture deal with Mothercare. Despite the One Child Policy, China is still a good market. Each of these only children is the object of adoration for a huge array of aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, and they spend inordinate amounts of cash on the nippers. Goodbaby looks a lot like Mothercare actually. Strollers abound on the top floor. Strangely, all the babies depicted on the posters in the shop are Western, not Chinese.

4.15pm Rolls-Royce Showroom

Traffic is picking up but the road is still clear. I pass the Rolls-Royce showroom in Oriental Plaza, one of the city's more spectacular malls, but decide not to go in. They know I'm only there to look - men in Arsenal jerseys and German army shorts rarely buy Silver Shadows in Beijing Suffice it to say that Rolls-Royce is doing well among China's new wealthy and that otherwise it looks like a Rolls-Royce showroom anywhere else in the world.

4.30pm HSBC

Time to go to one of the most recognisable British banks, HSBC. "Just because it says HSBC on the outside, doesn't mean it's HSBC on the inside," warns the Canadian waiting in the queue beside me as I wait to cash a cheque.

Retail banking still has a long way to go. Visiting HSBC in Hong Kong is a model of efficiency. In China, the livery is the same, but the bank is a Chinese bank. I leave with cheque uncashed, despite helpful attention from at least six service staff. This is a feature of the retail experience in China - there are huge numbers of staff everywhere you go, because labour is cheap, but all it often means is that even with the best will in the world, you just get told your transaction is impossible by more people.

5.30pm Dunhill

I only spent a short time in the Dunhill shop. As in Rolls-Royce, I'm only a voyeur. Prices for items such as Dunhill and other big luxury brands are much cheaper in Hong Kong, where duties are much lower. Even luxury goods made in China for international brands have to be re-imported, so many shoppers use the top luxury brand outlets in Beijing's malls and hotel lobbies as places to do some reconnaissance before heading to Hong Kong or Singapore to make their purchases.

6.30pm The Tree

John Bull's pub recently closed and reopened as a Tex-Mex joint, leaving Beijing more or less without a British pub. It barely has an Irish pub in fact. What it does have is The Tree, an old-fashioned British-style pub - friendly, cosy and welcoming. And alongside their devastating range of Belgian beers they serve Boddingtons. And a pint is a crucial ingredient in a day of High Street shopping. Gan bei!