As she kneads Ed's aching shoulders, Xiao Gu opens a conversation familiar to most resident foreigners.

　　'You must have loads of money,' she says. Gu, 19, has been working here for 19 months. When business is good, she earns about 400 yuan a month. She left senior middle school when her Miao minority family couldn't meet the fees. Her two elder sisters also left home in Duyun to work in and around Guiyang. Her youngest brother is still in school.

　　'This place is very poor,' she says. It's one of the ten most common statements we hear on the New Long March, but we still haven't got used to it. We have no idea how to reply.

　　'No, it's not poor,' is the first, obvious choice, like when a chef apologises for his poor food or a fluent English speaker bemoans her poor language skills. Chinese people put themselves down -- the cue for a complimentary contradiction, modest demurral, etc. (You see, as Englishmen, we know all about silly rules of etiquette.) But the problem here is that saying 'no' implies that Xiao Gu is exaggerating -- maybe things aren't so bad, after all. And when these words come from a passing wealthy stranger, it sounds insensitive.

　　So if 'no' is wrong, then how about 'yes'? The trouble is, that's even worse. It is so final, so depressing, hopeless. Plus -- and here's the kicker①-- it's often downright insulting.

　　Once upon a time before the New Long March began, we were pretty sure we knew what 'poor' meant, but after six months on the road, we have grown increasingly confused. For poverty, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. 'Maybe I cannot define it,' we say, 'but I know it when I see it.'

　　How do we know it when we see it? Because it makes us want to break down and cry.

　　Long before we catch sight of them, we hear them:Two giggling boys tumble and prance around a muddy field on top of a muddy hill in a muddy county of one of China's poorest provinces, Guizhou. Pu Chen slaps Xiong Kuan with a long, bendy reed he is supposed to be using on the water buffalo he presently mounts, akin to an emperor astride an elephant.

　　This 'little emperor' is very different from his pampered namesakes back in Beijing. For Pu, 11, has never been to school. His parents, we are told, 'bu zai le'. Maybe they are dead. Xiong, however, is affronted at the suggestion that he too is uneducated. 'I've been to school!' he protests. He is 12.

　　They goof it up for the camera and strut around a drab field like two little boys without a worry in the world. They are innocent, adorable. Their job is to plough the field, preparing it for corn planting.

　　We wealthy strangers pass through their lives, collect our images for the next Unicef poster in Beijing and move on to the next photo opportunity.

　　What do we leave behind? Poverty.

　　One of the strangest things about poverty, we now realise, is that it has next to nothing to do with money.

　　The New Long Marchers have walked 3,028 kilometres through six provinces and one autonomous region, visiting 41 of China's 2,500 counties. China's new premier has visited 1,800. Wen Jiabao says if the official benchmark for poverty -- an annual per capita income of 635 yuan -- were raised just 200 yuan, then the number of China's poor would treble to 90 million.

　　While the statisticians and statesmen play with numbers, let's get back to basics, or in this case a massage table in Guiyang where Ed tries a new approach. 'Look, honestly,' he says, 'I'm not rich by foreign standards.'

　　'Who cares about your standards?' says Xiao Gu. 'Look, you can travel, you have time off work. I can't do any of those things. You're rich and I'm poor.' She pummels a last calf, packs up and says goodnight.

　　She refuses a tip.