24 JULY 1993, page 15

A Regrettable Necessity'

is an infection which must not be allowed Xi'an LAST WEEK, in a smoky little restaurant in the shadow of the Ming dynasty walls of this former capital of China, I dined frugally......

Mind Your Language

IT IS hard for most people to be fun- nier than they are when at their most earnest. So we laughed when the Inde- pendent referred to `London's homosex- ual sado-masochistic......