Beyond taxi touts, are a warm people with a kind heart

"Don't carry too much cash with you and make sure you don't get cheated," a colleague reminded me when I told him I was going to Songshan Mountain in Henan. It was a warning I would receive numerous times from others in the newsroom and friends, before I headed for the province.

The central region seems to carry a reputation for fleecing travelers. That fear, some say, is reflected in the harsh-sounding Henan dialect.

My four-day experience there could not have been farther from those fears.