Tag: Anglo-Chinese Understanding

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 Labour Day. The traditions of Labour Day started in 1890 when the Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris designated the day to commemorate an event in Chicago in 1886 when the police used gunfire on a crowd that was protesting in favour of an eight hour working day! A number of protestors were shot dead and many more were injured. Remembering the ‘Haymarket Martyrs’ was an inspiration for the original Labour Day. May First was declared a national holiday in […]

Shanghai’ed Again

Shanghai has thrust itself back to the forefront of international news in two ways this week. The first is through the announcement of plans to further develop the Shanghai and Yangtze River basin as an international trade and business hub. The second, and quite possibly linked to the first, is the announcement by the celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay, that he will open his first restaurant in the city. In this blog I’ll share information about both of these announcements and link it to a deeper understanding of the history of Shanghai and its place in China and the world. The […]

Spring Festival Reflections

In the past three weeks I have taken advantage of the Spring Festival holiday period to travel extensively in China. Starting from Beijing I first of all travelled 2,087 kilometres to the city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in south-west China. I then went on a further 350 kilometres to my first base, the city of Dali. Then another 300 kilometres south from Dali to the border city of Tengchong which is very close to the border with Myanmar. After a return journey to Kunming I then cross-crossed central China, travelling to the city of Hangzhou, close to […]

Opening up to the New Year

In this new year blog I want to look backwards and forwards, reflecting on one of the most important parts of our SACU mission, opening up greater friendship and understanding between the peoples of our two countries. In a way what I’m doing in these blogs is very simple. I’m trying to share with you accounts of the friendships I’ve experienced here in China, the people I work with and live amongst to grow our shared sense that, as a phrase from the Analects,《论语》of Confucius says, 四海之内皆兄弟, sìhǎizhīnèijiēxiōngdì, ‘around the four seas we are all one family’. What is ‘opening […]

China catches a cold

My phrase of the week in my rather limited Chinese has been ‘ni leng bu leng? which translates as ‘are you feeling the cold?’. Chinese has this wonderful way of using paired, balanced phrases like this way of asking questions which are not only elegant but wonderfully convenient for struggling foreigners to remember. The answer to the question can be given in another classic Chinese phrase – ‘leng si le’ – ‘cold enough to die, but reduced to three terse, emphatic characters. After an incredibly idyllic, balmy autumn which lingered deceptively on into late November, temperatures have taken their inevitable […]

Beijing – A Simple Life

The author outside his Beijing suburb home In this blog I will talk about the sheer, simple ordinariness of my life in China. If you haven’t been to China you might have all sorts of ideas about what it is like to live here, as I have done for ten years. Maybe you have some slightly negative views of a limited or restricted life here. Maybe you have romantic or exotic illusions of life in an ‘oriental’ country. The outstanding feature of my life for the last ten years has been its wonderful stability and everyday ordinariness. In the UK […]