Soap operas with acting so bad it makes the cast of Neighbours look like Oscar-winners; operas with bizarre costumes and high-pitched whining that are frankly frightening: Chinese television is certainly an eclectic melting pot of entertainment a world away from the predictable melodrama of Big Brother and the X-Factor.

Nevertheless, the novelty wore off pretty quickly after I arrived here seven months ago. I soon found myself relying on rip-off DVDs for entertainment, sold on the streets for less than 50p (much to the dismay of Warner Brothers et al).

Two episodes of Culture Express on CCTV 9 (China's English language channel) - one an in-depth explanation of the physics of hot air balloons, the other about a strange sport which involves scrambling up a 20-foot pole upside down in the quickest time possible - put the final nails in the coffin of my viewing. Until recently, that is.

Since leaving my DVD player behind in Dalian and hitting the road, Chinese television has again come into my life in the communal areas of various hostels across the country. Much to my surprise, I've discovered a new-found appreciation for it, particularly CCTV 9; if only in a "it's so bad it's good" kind of way.

CCTV 9 has two main aims. Firstly to encourage and aid the ever-growing army of Chinese people learning English; and secondly, as the channel is available overseas on cable, to promote Chinese culture to the rest of the world.

Its main problem, and the main reason its viewing figures are so small (only one of the students I taught English to said they watched it), are that it attempts to fulfil these aims without so much as a trace of humour, irony or self-deprecation.

In Britain, the best television is that which mocks the idiosyncrasies of our way of life by portraying them in a caricatured way. Chinese TV, in its English language manifestation at least, is delivered with a straight face, hence the stream of documentaries and news bulletins that dominate the channel's scheduling.

Not that there's anything wrong with news and documentaries, when they're well done. But CCTV 9 has an annoying habit of taking a subject that might be interesting for five or ten minutes (hot air balloons, wacky sports) and turning them into minor epics.

Recently I watched a relatively interesting account of the history of Shoushan stones (similar to Jade but less common, and therefore even more precious). As a one-off it wasn't a bad idea for a show, but last night I saw the eighth instalment of the series; that's eight hours of people talking about stone carving on peak-time TV. Even the most ardent stone carving enthusiasts would have to admit that's a little over the top.

Nevertheless, guessing how many episodes they can squeeze out of "these ancient and magnificent stones" - and wondering how many more times the presenter can introduce an interview with the descendant of a famous carver (usually talking about how much their grandfather loved carving and how upset he was when Mao tried to stop them doing it during the Cultural Revolution) before throwing his hands up in the air and saying: "You know what? Enough's enough!" - has become a source of great amusement.

The news is also a good source of unintentional comedy, with its thinly-veiled propaganda - most of it fairly harmless - adding an element of interest to the otherwise dry, hard-news based bulletins. Human interest stories tend to be limited to rags to riches tales of Chinese entrepreneurship, recent examples including a woman who became a millionaire by breeding poodles and a man who made his fortune by adding salt to his previously bland brand of oyster sauce (usually the first thing most of us try).

Recently the US released a report about Chinese human rights abuses and the Chinese government responded with a report of its own, detailing America's own human rights shortcomings of late. CCTV 9 covered the story by reading the Chinese report pretty much word-for-word while showing gruesome pictures of the American military getting their kicks at Abu Grhaib jail in Iraq.

Fair enough, I suppose. But the report would have been a little more balanced if they had mentioned just one of the points from the American report.

Not that Americans are always the bad guys. CCTV 9 are more than happy to punctuate their programmes with montages of American and other foreign business men and finance ministers using the words "China", "growth", "economic" and "rapid" all in the same sentence.

The presenters, many of whom appear to be westerners who were too ugly to make it as broadcasters in their own countries, hold it all together admirably. My favourite is an American-sounding man with a comb-over that Bobby Charlton would be proud of.

During another fascinating documentary, about the history of ship-building in China, he ended a serious five-minute introduction by turning to the camera, pointing, smiling and declaring in his best Children's BBC voice: "Check this out!" For which he deserves immense respect in my book.

The presenters aren't exactly helped by the convoluted language they have to use either. One of the hallmarks of authoritarian political regimes is giving things names with four or five words when one would do.

Thus a war against Japan, which you might think would be called "the war against Japan," is actually referred to as "The War Against Japanese Aggression". Similarly, China's increasingly capitalist economy is given the ambiguous and far from catchy epithet: "a market economy with Chinese characteristics".

The English language is no barrier to the viewer's enjoyment of CCTV 9 during the adverts, however. I was careful to use plural form of the word advert in that last sentence as there are at least two that repeat themselves in a seemingly never-ending cycle: one for a pillow that smells of tea; the other - my personal favourite - featuring Manchester City's Sun Jihai showing off both his English and acting skills by delivering the line "I'm going back China" in a commercial for a travel company.

Perhaps, like me, he's hoping to catch episode nine of the Shoushan stone documentary.