Horatio Clare, appeared at The Bookworm International Literary Festival, Beijing in March. In a series of four postcards published on our website this week, he shares his impressions:

We sat at the feet of the prophets, publicists for Alibaba, Baidu and WeChat (future owners of Amazon, Google and Facebook). They spoke of data mining, O2O - online to offline - and mood reading. O2O means your phone can call a manicurist to you if you should pause for coffee today. Tomorrow, your phone will scan your face, sniff your pheromones and know better than you - so much better than you! - how you feel and what you need. Whether or not it books your shrink, messages your mate or calls your next of kin may be optional, seems certain to be, for a little while, anyway. U.S foreign correspondents say that when their tours end Washington is sleepy and America quietly dull. That is Beijing.

But this was weeks ago. It will all be different now.

Down to the Sea in Ships by Horatio Clare has been selected to the Wales Literature Exchange 2014 - 2015 Bookcase, our annual selection of recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation. His journey to China was organised in partnership with Literature Across Frontiers and supported by Wales Arts International.