Turkish Culture Minister Omer Celik joined Turkish Ambassador to China Murat Salim Esenli on Thursday to launch the 2013 Turkish Culture Year in China, with a reception and cultural stage show at Beijing's Poly Theatre. Celik's agency included a meeting at the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee on Friday and visiting cultural sites including the Great Wall and a hutong tour on Saturday. The minister travels to Shanghai over the weekend to present the stage show again there on Monday.

The upcoming cultural year will feature art exhibitions, singers, dancers and other performers. The programs follow the 2012 Year of Chinese Culture in Turkey.

Pakistani Ambassador to China, Masood Khalid, celebrated the country's national day on March 21 by hosting a reception at Beijing's Grand Millenium Hotel. The ambassador marked the actual holiday, Pakistan Day, on Saturday, with a flag-raising ceremony and cake-cutting joined by Yang Chuantang, China's minister for transport. Diplomats, business leaders and members of the Pakistani community also attended.

UK Ambassador to China Sebastian Wood hosted an opening reception on Thursday for the exhibition Picturing China 1870-1950 at Beijing's JW Marriott hotel. The photographs, taken from various British collections, have not been displayed in China before.

Between the 1840s and 1950s tens of thousands of Britons lived in or visited China, and the exhibition presents photographs that they had taken, commissioned or purchased. Mostly still held by families with past China connections, the images on display come from the Historical Photographs of China project at the University of Bristol, which is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.

The photographs will be on view at the hotel until April 7.

The Ethiopian embassy was celebrating last week after the Addis Ababa University signed a framework agreement to collaborate in offering the Amharic language at the Beijing Foreign Studies University of China. The Amharic program is scheduled to begin in September. It will be the first time Amharic, a Semitic language that is the working language of Ethiopia and of some 2.7 million emigrants, will be taught at a Chinese university.

Netherlands Ambassador Aart Jacobi visited the city of Wuhan last week, meeting with Jia Yaobin, the vice-mayor, and Wang Junzheng, the vice-governor of Hubei province.

EU Ambassador to China Markus Ederer delivered the opening speech at the launch of the Chatham House report on March 18. The meeting was co-organized by the delegation of the EU, the UK embassy and Chatham House, the British think-tank on international affairs. More than 90 Chinese and foreign experts and diplomats including economist and the former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Cheng Siwei, attended the event. "Resources Futures" analyzes the latest global trends in the production, trade and consumption of key raw materials or intermediate products - from crops, fuels, fisheries, forest products and metals to fertilizers. This meeting included discussion of China's role in global resource security, and options for new initiatives with the EU and other key partners.

Danish Ambassador Friis Arne Petersen was in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province last week to examine new stable facilities for 641 Danish breeding pigs recently released from quarantine stables. The tour was joined by investors from Denmark's Scandinavian Farms. The new batch of pigs are the first to arrive in China in almost two years, during which Danish officials and the Chinese control authority for import, AQSIQ, negotiated rules for exporting pigs from Danish areas within 50 km of an outbreak of H1N1. China's recognition of Danish control systems earlier this year cleared the way to restart the export of breeding pigs, the Danish embassy said last week.

The Greek embassy invited Beijing food-and-beverage executives and local media to a Greek wine-tasting event last week at the capital's Blue Balcony restaurant. Guests sampled offerings from Kondor Asia and the Porto Carras winery.

Send embassy news to michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.

Aris Argiriou, managing director of Kondor Asia, and Christos Failadis, the Greek embassy's culture officer, introduce a vintage from the island of Crete. Mike Peters / China Daily

(China Daily 03/24/2013 page5)