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What is the difference between the happy panda of Chinese tourism and the three pandas in the V&A Museum in London?

The three panda in the V&A (created by a Chinese artist) are named Angry, Smiley and Bruised.

They represent the generation born in China after 1960. (One is ‘smiley’ but in the local culture ‘smiley’ indicates ‘contempt.)

A Chinese lady in Bray explained all this to me in detail. She asks young Chinese coming to Ireland, ‘What do you find different here?’ If they don’t come up with the right answer, she supplies it,  ‘ The people here are more open and friendly. They may say they no longer go to church but the values and attitude they have inherited are Catholic. And they do go back to church occasionally.’

She herself became Catholic four years ago, after long consideration.

Now she asks young people, ‘Do you think you are well educated?’ If they say ‘Yes’, she enquires,  ‘Do you know the most popular and widely published book in the world is the Bible? If you haven’t read it you can’t say you are educated.’

I was in London for the Chinese Autumn Festival and got a look at the preparations in China Town. In the centre of the area is the ‘French Church’ where the Chinese Catholic Community meet.

Many of the members work in the nearby restaurants and businesses.

The Chaplain, a priest from mainland China, is kept busy visiting small communities around the country such as in Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, and also in Scotland.

While I was there news came out of the Beijing-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops. It is causing much confusion and unhappiness in Chinese Catholic circles around the world.

In London I used the Underground a lot. At one of the stations there was an announcement, ‘Alight here for Buckingham Palace’. I looked out but could not see the Queen alighting. However, it was good to know she has her own stop.

A man from county Down kept a diary during his years in China from 1854 to 1910.

They detail his efforts to find his feet while ‘roughing it in Hong Kong’ and searching for the relevance of his Wesleyan faith in the ‘anything goes’ Western attitude to China.

That in itself might make it worth reading the 77 volumes of his diary now stored in Queens University. However he went on to set up the Chinese Customs Service, post office and light house system. He also establish a brass band for Chinese musicians. In the process he became the most influential and respected Westerner in China at a crucial period of its modernisation.

The individual, of course, was Robert Hart, even today the most famous Irishman in China.

Born in 1835 in Portadown, he studied at Wesley College Dublin and Queens University Belfast. On graduating he was nominated for the British Consular Service in China and the rest is history.

Hart never forgot his roots and promoted a number of Irishmen to important positions and tried to help establish diplomatic relations between Imperial China and the Vatican.

He claimed he ‘did well for Western powers while doing good for China.’

You can follow his progress in China by viewing his diaries online thanks to Queens University.

It’s not often I get my picture painted.

Actually, I did not pose for the painting or even know it was planned.

One of the students staying in our house was returning to China after a year’s study here and he asked his artist friend, another Chinese student here, to draw a picture of the house with me (in typical pose?) out pruning the bushes.

I thought that if it showed me watering the flowers it might portray a nice image.

However, he told me it deliberately pictured me using shears.

‘It symbolises you role in the house here,’  he said. ‘While we are here you trim off our rough edges.’

I took it as a compliment.

Anyhow, I recommend the thought to those going to China to teach. It expressed the Chinese idea of what a teacher is: not one who just imparts knowledge but helps the student improve their character and be a better person. Or at least that is how I see it!

Among the thousands of people who came to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families were a number of groups from China.  They came ‘unofficially’ because their State does not encourage such religious events, national or international.

When the Communist Party came to power it believed that, under a socialist economy and prosperity, religions would die out but that did not happen.

When the country opened again to the wider world in the 1980s, there were many thriving Christian churches and the government thought it wise to relax some of the restrictions. They even allowed individuals to do religious studies abroad.

But recently it has felt threatened by the continuing popularity of religion and re-introduced Mao-era rules prohibiting under-18s from attending church. Now religious buildings are required to display the Communist flag indoors.

Yet Christianity thrives and small groups of Catholics, despite the crack-down, took the brave step of coming to Dublin.

On arrival, they were surprised to see the negativity towards religion in the media here.

One of the visitors, a priest from the Chinese mainland currently studying in the USA, stayed with us and I tried to explain the situation. The institutional Church was unable to respond to reports of abusive behavior towards people in its care in the not-so-distant past. That opened up a credibility gap between ordinary people and the institution.

In China, the tension is between the government and believers but I hope he saw how the church too, as an institution, can alienate people.

In the meantime, maybe we in Ireland can better understand that religion is not the problem but the way it can become institutionalized.

Yesterday I was at the RDS, at the exhibition area for the World Meeting of Families.

I was supposed to be at the Columban stall but spent a lot of time going around the other exhibitions (the people next door were for Myshall,  promoting their home area as a centre for pilgrimage.)

I met a lot of interesting people, many belonging  to groups trying to do their bit to be of service for others but feeling a bit frustrated because of the lack of support they got.

Back at the Columban stall, my greeting was, ‘Do you have any teachers in the family?’  and if they had I told them about the Aitece program, sending volunteer teachers to China.

There was also a car with stained-glass windows. I am not sure what use that was unless you wanted to go straight to heaven when you took to the road!

Sun Yat-sen is revered as the Father of New China and Michael Davitt was the Father of the Irish Land League and one of the greatest influences in the early Irish independence movement. What do they have in common? Academics in China and Trinity College, Dublin, as well as historians in Shrule, Co Mayo, are digging into the past to find out.

Sun fled to Hong Kong in 1895 after a failed rebellion in China against the Qing Dynasty but at the request of the Qing authorities he was expelled from the city by the British. Michael Davitt, then an MP in London, brought the matter to the house of Parliament and kept pressure on the British government to recognise Sun’s independence movement.

Davitt even planned to visit China in 1899 to meet Sun and find out more about the situation.

Students from China are now at Trinity researching the contact between Sun and Davitt, and the Davitt memorial Museum in Shrule, near Davitt’s birthplace, is making a documentary about the relationship.

As it happened, it was in Shrule that the Columban Fathers (then known as the Maynooth Mission to China) opened its first college in 1918 and 330 young Irishmen left Shrule for China before the college moved to Co Meath in 1944.

Neither Davitt nor Sun thought there might be that connection.

Sometimes it may take a stretch of the imagination to find historic connections between Ireland and China as the two are far from being next door neighbours and while one is tiny the other is huge and a world power.

Yet both were striving to free themselves from foreign control and become independent republics at the same time and their struggles were a source of mutual encouragement.

The ‘Wuchang Uprising’ on 10 October 1911, which launched the Chinese movement, was reported in the Irish papers on 24 October of the same year as an inspiring example of a ‘National Awakening.’

I have noted already the influence Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike in 1920 had on the Chinese revolutionary poet, Guo Moruo.

The involvement of Irish priests and Sisters in China from 1918 onwards brought regular news of political and social development in China to Irish homes through the ‘Far East’ mission magazine. Their presence in China also made Chinese officials aware of the fact that Ireland was not to be considered as part of England and that the Irish were not British.

Both China and Ireland had high hopes of getting their independence recognised at the post- World War l Paris Peace Conference of 1919 but the wishes of the Great Powers had preference.

More details of this ‘revolutionary’ interaction were given by Dr Aglaia De Angeli of Queen’s University at the China symposium in the Royal Irish Academy last April.

Today the links between Ireland and China are continued, not least by the Irish teachers going to China with groups like AITECE who interact with third level students and their appetite to learn about other countries and the way they manage their affairs.

Why China?

When people ask me, ‘What is so important about China?’ I reply, ’What do you know about renminbi (RMB)?’

Those who have lived in China, like our volunteer Aitece teachers, know it well because their salaries were paid in it and they used it every day in the market.

It is the national currency of China and within a decade you might be using it too.

According to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) Constitution, its headquarters will be in the          country with the largest economy. At present that is the USA but within a decade it is likely to be China. So the IMF HQ would move from New York to Beijing.

Now the IMF president is a European but soon that may be changing too.

At present it is useful to have US dollars in your wallet when traveling in many parts of the world but in ten years time, when China is likely to be the economic power, you may need RMB.

In 2000  the American economy was 8.5 times that of China’s but in 2001 China joined the WTO and by 2015 the US economy was only 1.6 bigger than China’s.

Economists figure China’s economy will overtake America’s within 10 years.

So, getting to know China is important and you can start counting your RMB. 

Among the 1,500 who turned up in Dalgan last Sunday to enjoy the Family and Mission Open Day were representatives from China, Korea and Aitece.

The glorious weather showed Dalgan at its best and the international involvement brought extra colour and excitement.

The Chinese Catholic Community provided free Chinese tea and an opportunity to draw Chinese characters. They also sang and led a square dance.

The Korean Catholic Community were also there to show support and a local Tae-kwan-do team displayed their skills.

The AITECE teachers gathered from as far away as Cork and Leitrim with Garreth Byrne, in particular, encouraging passers-by to teach in China or tell their friends and neighbours about the opportunities.

With so many activities it was difficult to see and meet everyone and hopefully we don’t have to wait 100 years for the next occasion.