Hello to all students on the U3A China Introduction course. I'm really pleased to be able to be in touch with other China enthusiasts, even (especially) those of you who are just beginners. Careful! You'll get hooked.

I hope you'll enjoy contributing to this blog - anything and everything related to China and your experience- books you can recommend, reminiscences of visits, exhibitons, talks you've attended or heard about.

Although I can't go to China very often these days I have contacts there and I like to keep in touch. I'm also lucky enough to live in London, so I can go to classes and a lot of China-related events.

Below is a photograph of the programme for a symposium I attended at the School of African and Asian Studies. The occasion was a celebration for the seventieth birthday of Gao Xingjian, the only person of Chinese origin to win the Nobel Prize for Literature



I hope you enjoy the course!