“What’s your favourite flower?” was the topic forming a base on which group members introduced themselves at a recent gathering of the London Mandarin Learners Meet-up group. The flowers I appreciate are manifold, but I realised that despite knowing the English names for all that blooms on my allotment, my ignorance of their Chinese names […]

  Living not that far from the centre of London, it is relatively easy for me to get into town to attend regularly at the London Mandarin Learners Meet-up group. Here I get to meet up with others to attempt translation from Chinese into English of a piece of text. Last time we tackled a […]

I’ll kick this ChinaChris.co.uk blog off with ‘Why I study Chinese’ – one of the two speeches I prepared for the oral ‘paper’ of my final exams in 1999. I am often asked “Why are you learning Chinese?” It’s not an easy question to answer as there is no single straightforward reason. There must be […]