China never lets you down.  It provides any writer with an inexhaustible supply of material that is stranger than fiction.  Wherever you go, you are certain to be within striking distance of a “China moment”: a jaw-droppingly surreal encounter.  I knew I was in for a treat when I entered Haerbin’s subterranean marketplace.  Sprawling eastwards from the railway station, the vast grotto houses several hundred market stalls.  These days, you can buy anything from a pirated Amy Winehouse or Leona Lewis CD to a “Gucci” or “LV” bag.  Almost 50 years ago, though, during one of the frostier periods of Sino-Russian relations – when the gigantic egos of Khrushchev and Mao collided – this cavern was a nuclear fallout shelter.  The only fallout to have contaminated this place, however, was in 1997 when 67 officials were found guilty of accepting bribes associated with the shelter’s conversion to a shopping mall.  The sorry episode, which directly or indirectly led to the mysterious death of Zhu Shengwen, a senior official, was even made into a TV mini-series.