We can only imagine how astonishing it must have been to witness the arrival of the first automobiles in China. Over a century ago, city folk and ordinary farmers must have stopped whatever they were doing to admire a mysterious vehicle that moved seemingly without human effort. Some said it was driven by evil spirits — they had said the same about the camera and its magic mirror years before. Others, with a better sense of humour, called it a foreign house walking, or wittier still a fart cart, for the black smoke that dissolved into the air behind it.