A Taste of London Fog.docVIP

A Taste of London Fog 　　Studying abroad is nothing novel to the Chinese youth of today. In fact， the topic is unavoidable. Posters advertising study abroad agencies plaster subway station walls， shopping malls and high school bulletin boards. Young salespeople giving out pamphlets for foreign language schools dot urban sidewalks； bookstoresbestseller sections overflow with vocabulary textbooks and SAT study guides. It’s fair to say that Chinese students today have study abroad mania. About 459，800 studied abroad in 2014 alone， an 11 percent increase over the previous year， according to Chinas Ministry of Education. With those kinds of numbers， it might be hard for todays self-funded， foreign-educated students to imagine what it was like for their predecessors in the 1970s. 　　In 1972， six years into the Cultural Revolution （1966-1976） and while Chinas schools and education system were in complete disarray， the government sent small groups of young people to Western countries to study. The UK was one of their destinations. Generally smart， industrious， patriotic and devout in their belief in communism， these young students， born and bred at a unique time in Chinese history， went through a variety of cultural and ideological shocks when they temporarily left the East to live in the West. Coming from a country whose doors were closed tightly to outsiders， these young students would kindle the beginnings of modern China’s relationship with the rest of the world. 　　 England Bound 　　After the Peoples Republic of China （PRC） regained its seat at the United Nations in 1971 and then US President Richard Nixon paid his famous visit to China the following year， the country established diplomatic relations with a large number of countries in a short period of time. Yet China’s relationship with the UK had begun much earlier. The UK was one of the first Western countries to recognize the PRC， making the announcement on January 6， 1950. The two countries first exchanged diploma