Scotland-China Association

Unless stated, events take place at the Garnethill Multicultural Centre, 21 Rose St, Glasgow G3 6RE with Chinese tea available from 7.15pm.

Talks are open to all - events are free to SCA members and £1.50 (£1.00 concession) for non-members.  All SCA members are also invited to join the committee and speaker for a Chinese meal in Glasgow city centre after each talk - just speak to a committee member on the night.

Saturday 26 May 2012
Branch outing to Samye Ling Buddhist Monastery, Dumfries and Galloway. This will be open to all members. To arrange bus hire and calculate costs per person we would ask any member hoping to attend to contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Glasgow Branch Secretary, as soon as possible. We plan to enjoy a tour of the monastery and stop for lunch before returning to Glasgow late afternoon.

Tuesday 26 June 2012, 7.15pm
‘The Old China Hand Dinner’
Venue to be confirmed later, details will be announced on this site in due course.

The Annual General Meeting of the SCA will be held on Saturday, 16 June 2012 at 10.30 for 11.00 a.m.  The venue will be in Glasgow.  More details of the event will be posted on this page in due course.

Full details of this year's HSK examinations in the Chinese language are now available on the website of the Confucius Institute at the University of Edinburgh.

The next examination date is Saturday 19th May 2012.

The HSK page on the Confucius site, linked above, also includes details of HSK levels, fees and registration, and advice on preparation.

If you are interested in working or studying in China, then HSK should be of interest to you. The Confucius Institute is the only centre in Scotland to offer this examination.

HSK is the only official Chinese language certificate accepted in mainland China as an assessment of proficiency in Chinese language – the Chinese equivalent of TOEFL or IELTS. As such it is required by Chinese educational institutions and some employers, and some scholarships require HSK certification.

The work of the noted Chinese writer Chiang Yee, who was in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, is being celebrated in an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which runs from 23 April to 9 November 2012. See the V&A website for more details.

This may be of interest to SCA members and friends, many of whom may know his excellent book The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh, originally published in 1948 and republished in 2003.

Chiang Yee managed the Chinese collections at the Wellcome Institute, and this book is based on several trips to the Scottish capital. This volume, like the others, brings an unusual and amusing perspective to familiar culture and places, based on his wanderings in all weathers, rain or shine - “the rain was by now pouring down in such torrents that I could not see the end of Morningside Road...I could not possibly show myself less persevering than the Scots, so I walked on”. The weather seems to play a large part in his memory of Edinburgh - “to be greeted on my arrival in Edinburgh by drizzling rain seemed to me an appropriate welcome”, he says, and calls the rain “my friend”.



The introduction to the 2003 reprinted edition notes three themes - “defamiliarisation”, in which Chiang “transforms a common scene into an unfamiliar sight or a normal concept into an abnormal one” ; “a profound simplicity” ; and a superb pictorial quality. Indeed, interspersed throughout the book, Chiang's delightful paintings of city scenes, such as the Botanic Gardens, Zoo, Royal Mile and Princes Street, add a Chinese style to Scottish sights. He often saw things rather differently than local tradition, for example seeing Arthur's Seat not as the traditional lion but as a sleeping elephant (and draws it thus, too – he may have a point !).

Chiang was, in summer 1937, a guest in Scotland of Sir Reginald Johnston, the former Hong Kong civil servant and commissioner of Wei-hai-wei, who had recruited him to teach Chinese in London three years before. Chiang spent several weeks at Johnston's last home at Eilean Righ, while “beset by worries and uncertainties” - it seems this visit, and his others, left him with a very powerful impression of Scotland.