All Articles

A new Pax Mongolica

This week brought upsetting news of more conflict and chaos in areas of the world that were once integral to ...

China Meets the World

A new start for partnerships between China and the UK? I’m sure that all SACU members will join me in ...

St Cuthbert’s Silk – Connections, ancient and modern

St Cuthbert and an ancient East-West connection Here in Beijing, a significant academic conference has just come to a close ...

A Tale of Two Supermarkets

Aldi stores are becoming a familiar presence in Shanghai One of the undoubted changes in the UK over the last ...

Halloween Special!

Lanterns guiding ghosts home during Zhōngyuán Jié, Chinese Ghost Festival Superstitions are a deep part of the roots of every ...

Quirky China Connections

The rhubarb pioneers of China! Blame it on the rhubarb! In this blog I want to look at the more ...

Building Bridges of Understanding

2024-10-09 15:22:00Source:China TodayAuthor:staff reporter ZHOU LIN Chris Nash (sixth from right) organizes an exchange activity for Chinese students with their ...

The Needham Question Re~visited

Joseph Needham As you know from my previous Blog, this October is the 75th anniversary of the New China which ...

75 Years of Progress!

Beijing illuminations start the National Day holiday! Starting this weekend the people of Beijing and visitors to the city will ...

Zhōngqiū ānkāng

Wishing you a Healthy and Tranquil Mid-Autumn Festival! This year the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival will take place on Tuesday ...

Dreams of England

Dreaming of pursuing their education in Britain For my Grade 12 students in Beijing, this has been the worst and ...

Introducing Dianne Francombe, OBE .

Dianne receives her OBE for services to China -UK relations, 2020 In the Chair’s Blog this week I present an ...

Qīxījié – Chinese Valentine’s Day

Niúláng and Zhīnǚ Cultural travellers in China will know that the seventh day of the seventh month according to the ...

Harmony – A Photo-Essay

In recent Chair’s Blogs I have been delighted to share with you Award winning entries for this year’s Annual Essay ...

The Sound of Nature

The author with Dr Cheng Yu of the UK Chinese Music Society and Director of the London International Chinese Music ...

Olivia Philips, Highgate School ~ ‘On Harmony’

Professor Sun Hua of Peking University with prizewinners Olivia Phillips (Highgate School) and Desmond Zee (King’s College School Wimbledon) In ...

Ella-Mae Cox, Marlborough College

Ella Mae’s self-introduction: The ‘star flower’, commonly use in Traditional Chinese Medicine to restore harmony to the body. I am ...

What are some important differences and similarities between the Chinese and British economies?

Shenzehn in south China shows the current emphasis on ‘harmony’ in Chinese economic thinking What are some important differences and ...

SACU / Peking University Essay Prize winners 2024

Lv You, her mother and her Headmaster celebrate her prize-wining essay SACU is dedicated to supporting each new generation of ...

Come with me to Nánjīng and Wúxī

A view of Wúxī by night One of the benefits of working for a Chinese International Education company as I ...

zhāocáimāo – the beckoning cat

zhāocáimāo – the beckoning cat I wonder if like me you’ve always been intrigued by the cat figures that can ...

Dragon Boats from China to the World – Duānwǔjié!

Dragon boat race in southern Guangzhou I’m sure you’ve all noticed that Dragon Boat festival has arrived. We can look ...

Why Bridges of Understanding to British Universities really matter!

Wang Xiao Yu at UCL As we all know education exchange is one of the best ways to grow friendship ...

China and Me

The author at Black Dragon Pool, Lijiang I have lived and worked in China since 2013, during which time I’ve ...

Growing People to People Connections

Guangzhou Garden, Bristol Did you know that the city of Bristol has its own garden dedicated to expressing the connections ...

China and the UK between them grow ‘the tree of life’!

Nurturing the Tree of Life together! It’s exam time here in Beijing! For students and teachers alike, it’s the same ...

Wǔsì Yùndòng ( May Fourth)

As I write this it’s May First, a national holiday in China which is known as 劳动节, Láodòng Jié or ...

The Evolution of Chinese Characters

In this Chair’s Blog I want to encourage you if at all possible to visit an exhibition being held from ...

地球日~ dìqiúrì ~ Earth Day

This blog post cites the content presented in article by an organisation called WildChina on Green Initiatives in China’s cities ...

A Taste of China

A street side local noodle restaurant in Yunnan In this week’s blog I’d like to open up a discussion in ...

The Festival of Pure Brightness

清明上河圖, Qīngmíng Shànghé Tú, ‘Going along the river during Qing Ming’. Currently there is a cultural event in China, which ...

Resonances – Spring Themes, Poetry in Chinese & English

Sing in the Beijing Spring If three years of studying literature at Cambridge University taught me anything at all, it ...

Building bridges at the grassroots

Grassroots football in Guizhou, south-west China Let’s talk football! As I write this article I can hear the familiar shouts ...

Shanghai’ed Again

The bright lights of the Shanghai Bund Shanghai has thrust itself back to the forefront of international news in two ...

Spring Festival Reflections

The author makes a new friend at the San Ta or Three Pagoda temple in Dali, Yunnan Province. In the ...

SACU member Jan Johnson’s Chinese New Year

Dragon Year Blessings The SACU mission is to tell stories of people to people friendship between Britain and China. I ...

A Tale of Two Dragons

(Article developed from an original idea by Michael Crook) Dragon on a Beijing roof tile At this time all over ...

新年快乐 – xīnniánkuàilè

Happy New Year! Author – 周尚, Zhou Shang New Year – a time for Family Reunions The scenery outside the ...

Chinese New Year 2 -Wanderlust

Heshun Town – 立春 – Li Chun, the first day of Spring, 2024 As I write this, it’s a day ...

An Introduction to the Chinese New Year Festival

Original art by painter Liu Liyong The Chinese New Year or Lunar Festival or Spring Festival is one of the ...

Laba Festival

Laba Kuai’le! Happy Laba Festival! Here in Beijing there are the earliest signs of Spring. The extreme cold weather of ...

Language learning and Friendship

Arron Van Rompaey and Chinese speaking friends In this Chair’s Blog I want to give a platform to our talented, ...

So much to learn from each other.

A shared love of poetry One of the key things that drives me in my work for SACU is the ...

Opening up to the New Year

Let’s look ahead to working together in 2024 to build even more bridges of understanding between the people of Britain ...

What’s the connection between Stonehenge and Chinese dumplings?

Zhang Zhongjing invented dumplings by wrapping mutton and Chinese medicine in dumpling dough Can you solve this Christmas conundrum? The ...

Already Seen: A Deja Vu in History

Yi Xing Renmin University of China, Master of Journalism, Class of 2014 China Daily Reporter in London Find out more ...

Keeping China Connections Live !

The author joins Sichuan Opera First of all let me send festive good wishes to us all. I thought I’d ...

The Unsung Heroes — Reflections on Participating in the 2023 Armistice Day Ceremony (中英双语)

Weien Zong Master of Global Media Industries, King’s College London Bachelor of Communications, South China University of Technology Freelance Media ...

Changing faces of Chengdu

The ‘Changing Faces’ show, from Sichuan Opera For the last week I have travelled with Grade 9 and Grade 10 ...

China catches a cold

Winter arrives in Beijing My phrase of the week in my rather limited Chinese has been ‘ni leng bu leng? ...

Beijing – A Simple Life

The author outside his Beijing suburb home In this blog I will talk about the sheer, simple ordinariness of my ...

To travel a thousand miles beats reading a thousand books

行万里路胜读万卷书 (xíngwànlǐlùshèngdúwànjuǎnshū) Lusheng Festivals of the Miao Community in Guizhou For this week’s Chairs Blog let’s get our hiking boots ...

双十一, Double Eleven, more than just a shopping festival?

李佳琦, Li Jiaqi, ‘the lipstick king’, a very successful and sometimes controversial live-streaming celebrity. Double Eleven! One of the most ...

We Remember them All

Chinese Labourers at the Western Front, 1917 On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, Britain ...

Halloween & Strange Tales

Pu Songling’s Dark Frontier. This week it has been Halloween in the UK. The origins of Halloween are seasonal. It ...

Send for Mother in Law

Living in an Extended Family I talk all the time to the Chinese teachers in my school about the things ...

Double Ninth Day

An Autumnal Chrysanthemum This Friday, 27th October, all of the students in my school in Beijing with all of their ...

A Journey Through Civilisations

SACU members Iris Yau, Richard Poxton, Ros Wong (membership secretary), Zoe Reed (former Chair) and Frances Wood at the ‘Journey ...

A Belt and Road Initiative White paper for Green Development

Belt and Road Railway track in Kenya, July 28, 2022. If in Britain we think about the Belt and Road ...

Which films can I watch to improve my understanding of China?

The Goddess – 神女 – 1934 This is considered by many to be the finest silent film ever made in ...

Understanding Chinese Thinking:

The 24 Solar Terms Today is the ninth of October. The Chinese international school where I work has just put ...

From China, ketchup for your chips!

The China~Europe railway, a bridge for trade and cultural understanding These days of course we are increasingly used to the ...

Aspects of Chinese Democracy and Progress

First published in China Eye (79) Autumn 2023 pages 5-7 3 OCTOBER 2023 | Walter Fung Democracy; Definition The Western ...

Chinese Intangible Culture Heritage in the UK

First published in China Eye (77) Spring 2023 pages 20-23 3 OCTOBER 2023 | Walter Fung In 2001, UNESCO made ...

月 霜 ~ Frost Moon

Autumn’s moon cries, her ice tear of Jade, of harvest, opens this ringed nocturnal door to worlds lost within you, ...

Within the four seas we are all one family.

四海之内皆兄弟 – sìhǎi zhī nèi jiē xiōngdì Within the four seas we are all one family. 22 SEPTEMBER 2023 | ...

Commemorating the Flying Tigers

4 SEPTEMBER 2023 | Chris Nash This year is the 80th celebration of the Flying Tigers. A major ceremony has ...

Building Bridges Through Dance

14 AUGUST 2023 | Chris Nash At SACU we are looking for innovative ways to grow our mission of better ...

Bridges over Troubled Waters

7 AUGUST 2023 | Chris Nash 樊迟问仁子曰爱人问知子曰知人 “ Fan Chi asked about Goodness. The Master replied, “Care for others.” He ...

Reflections on the Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery

31 July 2023 | Chris Nash Firstly I’d like to thank SACU members,  Lead Curator Bryan Sitch and Project Assistant ...

A Review of ‘China’s Hidden Century’

13 JULY 2023 | Chris Nash Throughout the summer and until October 8th there is an exhibition at The British ...

Progress Report for Manchester Museum’s Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery

Manchester Museum, part of The University of Manchester, has been undergoing its hello future development including a new Lee Kai Hung Chinese ...

Understanding China Through the Lens of a British Historian

SACU President Michael Wood OBE was interviewed for China Today by staff reporter ZHOU LIN. “Unless you understand China, you ...

Some Observations on Differences between East and West, by Walter Fung

There are differences between East and West as discussed below but we have a lot in common with the East ...

Afghanistan – Earthquake on the Edge of Empires, by Andrew Hicks

President Joe Biden has described the American evacuation from Kabul as, ‘one of the most difficult airlifts in history’. Since ...

The Communist Party of China Celebrated 100 Years in July 2021, by Walter Fung

This article was first published in China Eye, Issue (71) Autumn 2021. The CPC has been in governance for 72 ...

Living and teaching in Beijing in the 1970s: by Michael Sheringham

Living and teaching in Beijing in the 1970s  Michael Sheringham  Michael is a regular contributor to China Eye. He was ...

Interview with Michael Wood, SACU President, on Du Fu and China for Chinese Social Sciences Today

This interview with Professor Michael Wood, SACU President, on Du Fu and China, was published in Chinese Social Sciences Today (a Chinese ...

gonghe, not gung-ho!

Misunderstanding between China and English-speaking countries is well illustrated by the term “gung-ho”. It is one of the few phrases ...

Panda Diplomacy

“The gift that only the patron can give”, is the way a Chinese Han lacquer cup was described in BBC ...

The Three Body Problem

Filming of “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” has taken place in China but they are not happy to release it, nor ...

Chinese Science Fiction

Filming of “Remembrance of Earth’s Past”, the Liu Cixin trilogy directed by Fanfan Zhang, and starring Feng Shaofeng and Zhang ...

“Only by working together will we defeat the virus” Interview

Dr. Li Yan, one of the 40,000 Chinese doctors who went to help during the lockdown in Wuhan gave an ...

Can a messed up world fight the pandemic together? – article from Think China Magazine, 17 April

Did China make up the numbers? Did it waste precious time before getting information out to the world? Belgian writers ...

Trump’s America needs to ditch the blame game – article from Think China Magazine, 3 April

Belgian writers Ng Sauw Tjhoi and Dirk Nimmegeers point out that the only thing much worse than possibly holding racist ...

Book Review: “A Bridge Between Hearts: Anglo-Chinese Friendship and Understanding”, by Zoe Reed

Book cover of A Bridge Between Hearts: Anglo-Chinese Friendship and Understanding  by Zoë K. Reed, SACU Chair This book review ...

Covering up: Covid-19 and the face

Covering up: Covid-19 and the face, by Elizabeth Gasson, 10th April 2020 Having spent seven years in China, our SACU ...

Riding out the coronavirus epidemic in China’s capital, by Tamara Treichel

Tamara is a member of SACU who has already contributed a number of articles for China Eye on a variety ...

Joseph Needham and ‘Brand China’

Steve Bale lives in central Beijing and on the north Norfolk coast. He first travelled to China in 1988 and ...

Climate Change and China, by Walter Fung

Climate Change and China by Walter Fung This short article summarises the current policy of China on climate change and ...

China and the West: meeting at the crossroads of world history

A book review by Dirk Nimmegeers.  Dirk is a member the Belgium-China Friendship Association and also of SACU. He edits ...

China’s Path: Four Decades of Opening up and how it Challenges our Preconceptions

Tom Harper is a SACU member and joined SACU Council in September 2019. He is a doctoral researcher at Neijiang ...

The UK Chinese Community

Walter Fung gives a survey of the Chinese communities in the UK. The article first appeared in SACU's China Eye ...

The Chinese in Britain

This is a historical article from an early issue of China Now magazine. Jenny Clegg tells the story of Britain's ...

Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor: Translator of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Cyril Cannon worked in the printing industry before moving to academia, undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the London School ...

First Impressions of Chinese about the West

China's introduction to Europe was a bewildering experience. R.G. Tiedemann, a lecturer at "S.O.A.S. University of London" ➚ describes how ...

Robert Hart: a man of two worlds

Martin Lynn recounts the experiences of Robert Hart employed by the Chinese in the dying phases of the Qing Dynasty ...

Agnes Smedley 1892-1950

Alice Roberts describes the fascinating life of a committed American friend of China : Agnes Smedley, the article first appeared ...

China and Bertrand Russell

Tony Simpson is the editor of ‘The Spokesman’, the quarterly journal of The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. In September 2015, ...

Senior British Born Chinese, who we are, where we came from

Walter Fung tells the story of Britain's Chinese community. A version of this article (BBCs-Who we are, where we came ...

Victorian and Edwardian views of China

This article from SACU's China Now magazine in 1988 surveys how the English viewed China one hundred years ago. 'Solicitously ...

How to be half-Chinese

Sophie Taylor explores the ambiguity in being labelled - 'half-Chinese'. This article was first published in SACU's China in Focus ...

Cooperatives in China

Tim Zachernuk has been living in China since 1995 working on rural development and poverty alleviation projects. Starting in 2000 ...

Sightseeing, family and SACU Business – a trip to China 2017

Our Chair, Zoë Reed was on holiday and visiting family in China in October 2017. Zoë and her husband, Richard ...

Bloomsbury in China – Julian Bell, a teacher in Wuhan University in 1935-37

Shortly after arriving in Wuhan in 1935 to teach English at the university there, Julian Bell, the nephew of Virginia ...

Understanding China – an essay on SACU’s 50th Anniversary

Jenny Clegg is a Vice-president of SACU. She was a Senior Lecturer in International Studies, and a China Specialist at ...

Early SACU Tours

There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when travel to China by Westerners was very limited. At this ...

SACU’s Foundation

To mark SACU’s golden anniversary this article by Rob Stallard looks back to the events leading up to its foundation ...

Background to the formation of SACU in 1965

This article by Derek Bryan, SACU’s First Secretary, recounts the events leading up to the formation of SACU in 1965 ...

History of China UK Friendship Societies before SACU

Before SACU was set up in 1965, there had been a series of organisations concerned to develop closer understanding between ...