Tag: Building bridges of culture

St Cuthbert’s Silk – Connections, ancient and modern

Here in Beijing, a significant academic conference has just come to a close. From November 6th to November 8th, Beijing hosted the world’s first World Conference of Classics. The event was co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Ministry of Education of China, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China, the Ministry of Culture of Greece, and the Academy of Athens. An important outcome of the event was the establishment of a China Classical Civilisation Research Institute in Athens. The event gathered four hundred and eighty-five scholars from over 30 countries and regions. The event reminds us […]

Halloween Special!

Superstitions are a deep part of the roots of every culture. Anyone dropping into the West on October 31st without a knowledge of the culture and customs of Halloween would be very confused by what they saw, children and adults wandering the streets in macabre outfits and demanding ‘trick or treat’. A festival like Halloween is a complex cocktail of centuries of influences, some modern and commercial, but others stretching back to the earliest attempts of people to make sense of their world. In the dark origins of Halloween we can find echoes of the ancient Celtic festival of ‘Samhain’, […]

Quirky China Connections

Blame it on the rhubarb! In this blog I want to look at the more humorous aspect of building bridges of understanding between the people of China and the people of Britain. Why rhubarb? Well, last Friday, at a very prestigious banquet in Beijing, I found myself sitting next to the wonderfully witty Michael Crook, who interrupted an earnest discussion about cross cultural Educational philosophies to inquire if I’d ever managed to buy rhubarb in China. It was a question of Johnathon Swiftesque absurdity. As far as I knew, after ten years of trying every Chinese culinary delight possible, the […]

Building Bridges of Understanding

2024-10-09 15:22:00Source：China TodayAuthor：staff reporter ZHOU LIN British educator Chris Nash brings innovative ideas to build understanding and promote communication between young Chinese and Britons. Chris Nash first visited China in 2008 as a guest of the BBC and it was “love at first sight.” Nash, now the new chair of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), is an old friend of the Chinese and has long been engaged in international education in China. Integrating Chinese and Western Ideas  A postgraduate in education, Nash was a school headmaster in England for 10 years, when he introduced many innovative ideas, especially e-learning […]

Qīxījié – Chinese Valentine’s Day

Cultural travellers in China will know that the seventh day of the seventh month according to the Chinese lunar calendar is Qīxī Festival which literally means the festival of the Evening of Sevens but is increasingly translated as ‘Chinese Valentine’s Day’. This year that means 10th August. So good news for romantics – in China you get two opportunities to write that special poem that will win you undying love. And good news for florists who get to sell twice as many red, red roses. Underneath the commercial opportunities are there any meaningful links between the two events and the […]

Come with me to Nánjīng and Wúxī

One of the benefits of working for a Chinese International Education company as I do is that compared to an ex-pat job for a British, American or Australian school in China, I get to access a lot more of China for direct experience of the country, the culture and the people. It’s true that I’m not paid the same salary as principals at some of the large western owned international schools in China, but personally speaking the opportunity for ‘close encounters with China’, more than makes up for this. The most recent of these school trips, we call them ‘study […]

zhāocáimāo – the beckoning cat

I wonder if like me you’ve always been intrigued by the cat figures that can be seen everywhere at the entrances to both Chinese and Japanese restaurants- you know the ones with the waving paw. They are just as popular in China as they are in Asian restaurants and shops across Britain. If you’re intrigued, but not at all sure what they mean, I hope you’ll enjoy this article where I try to to find out about the beckoning cat’s significance. In the interests of being even-handed, I’d better declare that I have found both Chinese and Japanese origin stories […]

Growing People to People Connections

Did you know that the city of Bristol has its own garden dedicated to expressing the connections between the people of Bristol and the people of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou?  Neither did I! In this blog I will briefly introduce a short history of the fascinating city of Guangzhou but as quickly as possible get to the garden itself. Guangzhou is a very appropriate city to be twinned with Bristol, because in history they were both once the trading capitals of their respective countries.  It was from Bristol that Atlantic sea journeys to West Africa and then the […]

The Festival of Pure Brightness

Currently there is a cultural event in China, which the people themselves call 清明, which is put into the westernised pinyin as ‘Qing Ming’. The English translation for this is ‘Pure Brightness’. In this article I will start by introducing some common features of the festival, discuss some similarities with western traditions and then go on to discuss a very famous Chinese painting based around the festival called, 清明上河圖, pinyin: Qīngmíng Shànghé Tú, ‘Going along the river during Qing Ming’. Like many festivals in China, the origins seem to lie in a mix of history and the environment. One explanation […]

Resonances – Spring Themes, Poetry in Chinese & English

If three years of studying literature at Cambridge University taught me anything at all, it is that poems must speak, or more accurately ‘sing’, for themselves and not speak through the explanations of literary critics. It’s finally Spring, the season that has been the inspiration for myriads of poetry in both Chinese and English In this Blog I’d like to present a sample of seasonally themed poems from both cultures in the hope that they resonate with you in your own encounters with vernal scenes. Having said this, I feel the need to preface the lyrics with a few thoughts […]