‘Great Books of China’ introduces sixty-six works spanning three millenia of Chinese history selected by the former curator of the British Library’s Chinese collection Frances Wood. Guanghwa Bookshop on Shaftesbury Avenue near Leicester Square hosted an event early in December 2017 at which Frances explained her selection. Guanghwa staff had been busy festooning the walls […]

Tuesday’s London Mandarin Learners Meet-up session involved participants introducing themselves to the group. One of us turned out to be a ‘swing’ dance instructor. This brought to mind another of Su Shi’s poems – Butterflies Lingering over Flowers

Another set of Chinese characters I succeeded in memorising whilst waiting at traffic lights in Taipei were those forming the text of one of the ‘Nineteen Ancient Poems’. ‘Altair is Far Away’ tells of the Weaving Maid weeping with grief as she stands parted from her husband and their children who dwell on the far […]

Taipei is not that great for cycling. It is rarely possible to travel even a single mile without finding your route blocked by a big, wide, busy road. In consequence, when resident in the city around the turn of the millenium, I came up with the ‘poem card solution’ to banished the frustration of waiting […]