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Some fans were still gathering their wits and emotions on the stone steps inside the building after [Aly Bain] and his cosmopolitan musical pals, Sweden's incomparable Ale Moller and the New York fiddler and old-timey banjo player Bruce Molksy - whose versatility is fabled - had strolled onto the stage and performed as though we were in the back room of a pub where informal cosy warmth is the norm. There were varied and often haunting melodies, tunes and occasional songs that crossed the oceans and the cultural divides, much like Aly Bain's highly acclaimed television series The Transatlantic Sessions, and saw this alliance of three outstanding exponents of the traditional format excel in a venue that was once graced by Charles Dickens.

EVEN in rehearsals, there's a subtle dazzle emanating from Vasily Petrenko that sprinkles a shower of that elusive X Factor dust around the drabbest of rooms, infusing a lightness of mood to a chat with the young Russian maestro about his thoughts on China, where earlier this week he arrived for a series of concerts. Chinese music lovers across all genres are queuing up to lay on a warm reception for the willowy, blond, Russian who, with the Liverpool Phil in full flow, enraptured a Royal Albert Hall BBC Proms audience in the summer with a breathtaking interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, which picked up a Gramophone Award last year. Vasily is leading the distinguished Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra on a six-day debut tour of the \"Middle Kingdom\" that takes in Shanghai and the Beijing Music Festival, regarded as one of the most prestigious artistic dates in Asia and a cultural high spot between China and the West. \"It is something I have always wanted to do ever since arriving in Liverpool,\" remarks Vasily, aware that his adopted city has been twinned with Shanghai for 10 years and is the only UK city to have a pavilion at the World Expo. Indeed, this is a nice twist of serendipity for Petrenko, as his home town of St Petersburg has enjoyed sister city status with Shanghai since 1988.

[Warren]'s \"Chosen Men\" include Mike Taylor, now running the Liverpool Shanghai Partnership, Peel's development chief Lindsey Ashworth, Jack Stopforth from the Chamber of Commerce, along with property portfolio fellows Barry Owen and Phil Furlong. Mind you, it's worth observing the Shanghai Expo theme of \"Better City, Better Life\" rather than letting the usual canon of \"Big Bucks, Better Business\" dominate the discussions. Once again Peel - which has plans for what it calls the Shanghai Tower, a 60- storey sklyscraper on Liverpool's waterfront - is in the frame as there are hopes for links between Suzhou and its Wirral Waters project. It's all jolly exciting.

Bleary eyed, I squinted at the screen, baffled as young folk pedalled furiously about artificial hillocks on BMX bikes at the Beijing Olympics. Then there was the nail-biting battle of the sculling. Sculling? Chums in Ireland \"scull\" pints of stout, but it surely couldn't now be a sport, I thought. Then I recalled a couple of recent chats and realised that exploits are not just for those doing back- flips, synchronised diving, or giving the Nikes a hammering. First was David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool, who articulated fervently about the new Museum of Liverpool and then casually let slip how the Egyptian Ministry of Culture's Supreme Council of Antiquities had invited him to advise on their Grand Egyptian Museum Project. My mind swarmed with images of pyramids and camels and sandstorms. How spiffing, I mused. And a great coup for Liverpool.

Sunderland! Gadzooks! With respect to Sunderlanders everywhere - where's that then? It sounds like a seafarer's nightmare in the Baltic or a giant bacon bap from Subway. But then again, didn't the poor old Jarrow Marchers hail from that neck of the woods? Sorry, Sunderland, you also seem to get it regularly in the neck from southern wallies. The esteemed editor of this journal, Mark Thomas, introduced the talk where Dr Kerry Brown, who is executive director of the Liverpool Shanghai Partnership - remember, as a \"city on its last legs\", we are twinned with China's most dynamic metropolis - declared that Liverpool is gearing up to show the rest of the UK the way forward.

It is fast-paced and often relentless in the bleakness that Macbeth's dirty deed evokes and while [Owen Teale] has an imperious stance, his descent into a madness forged by the treachery comes on at perhaps too fast a lick, rather than a gradual, babbling collapse of sanity. The three witches conjure up the anticipated elements of sorcery that define both the plot and the denouement and [Terry Hands] has dispensed with the annoying cackles in favour of a more eerie vocal swooping format. Indeed, their predications of Macbeth's ultimate downfall rely on the reality that his nemesis Macduff - a powerful, imposing presence thanks to Nicholas Beveney - was not born of woman.

Splodge. Just as the cultural bun fight is lifting spirits - with the tourism bigwigs chortling about how all the hotel rooms in Liverpool are booked until the Second Coming and beyond - it all goes pear-shaped - or perhaps in Scouse parlance \"lambananashaped\". Luning cast a querulous, gimlet eye our way. \"So this is,\" he barked in that precisely clipped Germanic fashion, \"the lovely lake. Yes? No?\" Now this is probably a mite curmudgeonly, but I'm persuaded that historic black-and-white film of the Luftwaffe bombing the city in the Blitz is not really the kind of cheery \"haste ye backs\" to be bidding our European neighbours these 60-odd years after that terrible conflict.

In fact the \"stars\" are a troupe of puppets - all made by [Ashley Shairp] and his team of four - who are involved in what he calls a \"meditation on voyeurism\" but with gags. \"We've created and made the puppets ourselves and they are all set in boxes, and even the boxes are puppets in their own way,\" said Ashley, who added that there are about 40 boxes, of varying sizes within which the puppets move about. \"We've all worked on the storyline, as it is, although it is not a complicated story. It is really about how people make connections,\" said Ashley, who is in charge of [Mordaunt]. \"I perform with my hand in his head as he observes the comings and goings.\"

\"We have them in lots of different colours,\" says Helen Woods, owner of Felicity Hat Hire's Southport branch. \"We have a fantastic one in fuchsia that looks like a starburst of flowers, and some that are like hydrangea flowers. Then we have ones in black with lots of netting.\" \"Most of the girls who come in here for Ladies Day bring their dresses in with them,\" says Helen, who anticipates being too exhausted from the rush in sales to make it to Aintree, although she is planning to wear a fuchsia percher to Chester Races' Ladies Days later this year. \"If you're not tall, you should avoid large hats because people will talk to the hat and not to you. Perchers are good for shorter people because they are quite transparent and don't make you look like you're all hat.\"

It is also shows how the Liverpool based artist Xia Lu - one of the five - sees her adopted home, as portrayed in a series of engaging water colours that focus on such subjects as the Albert Dock and the Anglican Cathedral. It is rather surprising - and perhaps a cultural clash - to gaze upon a tranquil scene from rural China and then to switch to Xia Lu's interesting observations of the Sefton Park Palm House or a Welsh church.