BEIJING — W hat becomes immediately apparent on entering the 10th annual Beijing car show is the emotional intensity with which China has thrown itself into its greatest consumerist passion to date: the first throes of an affair with the car. The entire nation, it turns out, is in love with them, is in thrall to them, is possibly thinking about buying one.

Or so it seems, as I attempt to make my way to the Ferrari stand, where I've been promised a delivery ceremony is about to be performed, my nose squashed into some man's armpit, my ribs flattened by the weight of what feels like a billion people pressing in on every side. I'd always known that there were a lot of people in China — I just wasn't expecting to meet them all on my first day.

Not quite everybody, I discover afterward merely 600,000 of them. All of them looking at cars, being photographed next to cars, picking up brochures of cars, getting into the driving seats of cars and shifting the gears and stroking the upholstery and opening and closing the boot.