I've coached in Guatemala and Indonesia, but I've never seen anything like China, where the approach was so different that I was thinking: “What planet am I on?”

When I arrived to coach in Henan province, they took me to a high-performance rowing centre that was walled, with guards and bars, like a prison. No one was allowed to leave. Henan was 1½ times the size of France and we had 150 rowers. My only mission in a year was to win one gold medal in the National Games.

On my first morning I was woken by the 3.45am alarm that heralded a 16-kilometre run in the dark. The athletes were exhausted from that, but they then had to complete a two-hour weights session - and they still hadn't eaten. Then they did two massive rowing sessions. This was the expected workrate every day.

After training, everyone would go to the private hospital where they were given soups, herbal infusions, all sorts, the contents of which were secret. Even as head coach, I was not allowed to know what was in them. I said to them: “No doping.” They said: “It's not doping, but you Westerners are stupid because there are so many other things you can do.”

Every morning, after working out, they would have a soup from a big pot with 10-12 bulls' penises in. They would also eat the bulls' testicles. This was for the men; the women had something different. They were also obsessed with antlers - again, for soup. It cost €1,000 (about £750) for a kilo of antler and I remember one delivery of 12kg. Their whole approach to food was the opposite of the Western approach. They would eat chicken heads but not the breast, and pigs' trotters but not the pork.

In the hospital, every day, they would test the blood and urine of the athletes. I saw one haematocrit level where the blood was so thick, the athlete would never have been allowed near the Tour de France.

After ten days I was told: “We have to leave, we are afraid other provinces are spying on us, we have to go to a secret camp.” Two days later, in the middle of the night, I was given ten minutes to pack and get on the bus. The whole team - athletes, coaches, medics and cooking staff - travelled for 1½ days to a camp in Szechuan province that had a two-kilometre course with walls around it.

There was one compound where we all lived and it was in a very bad state - no electricity, no hot water, nothing. The athletes showered outside in cold water and we lived that way for about four months, in temperatures around 1C (34F). Many more athletes started getting sick.

My initial thought was that the training was too heavy and I cut it down step by step. By the end we were starting at 5.30am. I got them a day off once and that day all the athletes sat down for about five hours for a written exam.

Every day I would have a meeting with a representative from the Communist Party, who, every evening, would send a report back. The political thing was totally foreign. When we talked about the athletes we referred to them not as a name but a number. I got passport photos of all of them and put them round my office so I could learn their real names.

But everything there was about winning gold. If you don't win, the money dries up and the programme stops. The pressure was huge. The parents of the athletes were given houses; if the athletes weren't successful, their parents would have to leave. At the National Games, Henan's rowing improved from nineteenth (of 22 provinces) to second and we won two silvers and three bronzes but no gold. Within half an hour of the last final, half my staff had been sacked.

Diederik de Boorder was coach of the Holland women's rowing eight who won bronze in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. He is now head coach of the Holland junior team.

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