Yuan Ren

For the past two weeks, my relatives and friends in China have been frantically messaging me worried for my health and mortified that Britain's pubs and clubs were still open. With Boris Johnson’s announcement of a lockdown, their concern hasn’t eased as images of London’s parks as busy as ever raise doubt over how seriously the British government is taking the threat of coronavirus. News of the Prime Minster testing positive for the virus certainly didn’t help. Among Chinese students in the UK, there is widespread panic that the window for returning to China may be closing, as the Chinese government blocked all foreigner passport holders from entering the country on Saturday. Many fear the ban could be extended to Chinese nationals.

 Beijing A strong coffee always perks me up on a smoggy day, especially when I can drink it somewhere clandestine — like an ‘illegal’ church. Seek, and you shall find — but when it comes to Christianity in China, you’re likely to get a bit lost. Without being told where it was, I could have spent a lifetime walking past the anonymous, seemingly empty office block, never knowing that inside it was abuzz with religious activity. A discreet sign in the lobby is the only indication that a Sunday service is in progress. In other parts of the world, a church announces itself to the faithful with a cross on a steeple.

 Beijing Gerard Manley Hopkins said that if the English had done nothing but ‘left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind’. He was right. Yet in Britain today, you’re so very embarrassed by what we regard as your greatest single industry — turning out polished young people. Here in China, we look at the education statistics you view with horror — the ones that show how independent schools teach just 7 per cent of the population and yet their alumni account for 51 per cent of solicitors, 61 per cent of senior doctors, 67 per cent of Oscar winners and 74 per cent of judges — and we think: yes please. That’s why we are so keen to send our children to Britain to learn.