Author: SACU Admin

13 JULY 2023 | Chris Nash Throughout the summer and until October 8th there is an exhibition at The British Museum entitled ‘China’s Hidden Century’. It covers the period of the nineteenth century, which parallels the Victorian period in British history. And just as in Britain, this was a time of great turbulence and change. The challenge confronting this exhibition is how do you tell the story of social change through objects, the ‘things’ that museums inevitably have in their collection. The exhibition starts with life at the late Qing court and glass cases of spectacular costumes worn by court […]

Misunderstanding between China and English-speaking countries is well illustrated by the term “gung-ho”. It is one of the few phrases we borrowed from Chinese and we promptly got it wrong! To Americans it means being extremely zealous. A 1943 film shows US marines in battle. In Chinese gōnghé simply means ‘work together’. Their acronym slogan 工業合作社, written in pinyin as gōngyè hézuòshè is pronounced gōnghé 工合 ‘to work together’ for short. It was picked up the New Zealander Rewi Alley, one of the founders of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. The linguist Albert Moe considers that gung-ho came via US Marine […]

“The gift that only the patron can give”, is the way a Chinese Han lacquer cup was described in BBC radio’s “history of the world in 100 objects”.  Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum had in his hand a lacquered cup found near Pyongyang and made around 220 CE. The character for ‘give’ (above centre) is composed of the silk radical on the left, sī and a verb meaning ‘unite’ at right, hé. It may be thought of as “the gift of silk unites the empire” Silk garments were symbols of imperial status and were highly valued as gifts […]

Walter Fung gives a survey of the Chinese communities in the UK. The article first appeared in SACU’s China Eye magazine in 2008. Walter Fung was born in Liverpool of Chinese parents and grew up in his father’s laundry. He is now retired after working for 35 years in the textile industry and is a member of SACU council as magazine editor. This subject is more complex than its simple title would suggest. The Chinese community comprises a variety of people from different places who came to the UK at different times, for different reasons, from different backgrounds and with […]

This is a historical article from an early issue of China Now magazine. Jenny Clegg tells the story of Britain’s Chinese community and their hosts’ ambivalent reaction. The history of the Chinese in Britain has yet to be written. What exists is only a handful of surveys, dissertations, census figures, and newspaper reports. But put these together and the story begins to unfold – a story that is part of both Britain’s and China’s history, and one that only makes sense viewed in the context of the relations between the two countries. It is a story in which there is […]

Cyril Cannon worked in the printing industry before moving to academia, undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics. His final posts were in Hongkong, initially helping to set up what is now City University, and then as Academic Consultant to Lingnan. He is retired and lives in London. He has been a SACU member for well over 20 years, and was on the editorial board of China in Focus. This article is based on the author’s Public Success, Private Sorrow: the Life and Times of Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor (1857-1938), China Customs Commissioner and Pioneer Translator. Foreword […]

China’s introduction to Europe was a bewildering experience. R.G. Tiedemann, a lecturer at “S.O.A.S. University of London” ➚ describes how it was not just the gunboats which shook Chinese civilisation. First published in China Now magazine 1992. First impressions The intellectual discovery of Europe was a traumatic event for imperial China. It shattered entrenched notions of a centrality and superiority which had intensified after China’s retreat into isolation in the fifteenth century, since the self-contained Chinese world order denied the existence of a civilisation other than their own there had been little inclination to find out about the outside world. […]

Martin Lynn recounts the experiences of Robert Hart employed by the Chinese in the dying phases of the Qing Dynasty. This article first appeared in SACU’s China Now magazine in 1988 Robert Hart was witness to many of the major events of late nineteenth century Chinese history, a period when the country was wrestling with the twin problems of foreign intervention and the need to modernise. He was to live through four foreign invasions of China, the Taiping Rebellion of 1852-64, the Boxer rising of 1900, the attempted partition of the country by the West and the eventual crumbling of […]