Foreign

In memory of my uncle George Aylwin Hogg

Published

12 months ago

August 22, 2025

Our Reporter

By Mark Aylwin Thomas

“Through his being and working, many blades of grass will grow in places where none grew before.”

This epitaph was penned by Rewi Alley, New Zealand-born writer, social reformer and educator, in memory of my uncle George Aylwin Hogg. Rewi Alley was a co-founder of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (CIC), and my uncle George became a close collaborator in this organization. His brief but powerful words capture the profound admiration for George’s selfless dedication.

I first encountered this line in the spring of 1988. I traveled to China representing George’s family to attend an unprecedented series of memorial events, honoring the memory of Rewi Alley who had died the previous December aged 90, after living in China for 60 years. I came to realize then, and was over-awed by, the apparent stature of my uncle in the modern history of China.

While I was there, I was asked if I would be prepared to act the part of my uncle in a television mini-series to be produced by Gansu Television. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity and returned later the same year for three months of filming.

That extraordinary experience gave me my first intimate glimpse into the emotional bonds and enduring friendship my uncle had forged with the Chinese people in times of war.

After returning to the UK, I immersed myself in George’s letters and manuscripts. Following this intense period of getting to know my uncle, I started to write his biography, “Blades of Grass: The Story of George Aylwin Hogg,” which was finally published in 2017.

This year marks several important anniversaries: the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War; the 110th anniversary of my uncle’s birth and the 80th anniversary of his passing.

To mark these occasions, the Chinese version of this book was published by the prestigious People’s Publishing House in Beijing and launched at the London Book Fair in March this year as part of the celebrations in the UK honoring George’s memory. The title “Blades of Grass” echoes the epitaph penned by Rewi Alley.

What moves me most about my uncle is not only his unwavering commitment to his ideals, but also his deep affection and genuine respect for the Chinese people.

In April this year, along with a group of family members, I made a most memorable visit to China, tracing my uncle’s footsteps from Shanghai to Shandan, and taking part in celebrations held in Gansu and elsewhere, commemorating his life’s achievements and his legacy.

Decades ago, my uncle had thrown himself into the lives of ordinary Chinese people with sincerity and compassion. His humanitarian convictions shone brightly during those dark years of war.

In February 1938, George arrived in Shanghai amid the Japanese invasion. The city was in ruins, ravaged by war. He initially planned to stay only two days, but upon witnessing the plight of the Chinese people, he decided to stay in China with a mind to tell the world what was going on there. He found a job as a journalist and was one of the earliest Western journalists to visit Yan’an, where he met with Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Nie Rongzhen. From then on, George aligned himself with the Chinese people in a shared struggle for justice and dignity.

During our recent visit, we recounted his story to children at the Shanghai Soong Ching Ling School, hoping that his legacy will live on as a source of warmth and inspiration for Chinese younger generations.

Shaanxi was where his ideals sprouted. In 1939, George met up with Rewi Alley in Baoji, just west of Xi’an, which had become the most dynamic center for the CIC in the North-West. It was here where George took up his task as publicity man for the CIC, and in that capacity, he was indeed able to travel widely, gathering colourful stories and writing extensively.

In time, they developed the idea for a series of technical training schools and George was instrumental in setting these up. The Bailie Schools were born, named so in memory of Joseph Bailie, an Irish-American missionary, an old China-hand, himself an educator and an old friend of Rewi Alley.

In due course, George took over the running of the Bailie School in Shuangshipu, a mountain village southwest of Baoji. He taught English, played basketball and sang with students, and even adopted four children of Nie Changlin, an underground member of the Communist Party of China.

From Shaanxi, our journey continued westward to Gansu, retracing the arduous wartime school migration George had led. I walked the same rugged mountain paths he once traversed with his students and colleagues.

In the harsh winter of 1944, as the war situation worsened, George led the entire school on a legendary journey westward. They crossed the snowbound Huajialing Pass on foot with mule carts and hand-barrows, transporting 60 students, staff, and 20 tons of essential equipment over 1,000 kilometers. After weeks on the road and a final stretch by a fleet of dilapidated trucks, they arrived in the ancient Silk Road town of Shandan, where the new Bailie School would rise from the ruins of old temples.

Despite the extreme cold and overwhelming workload, George threw himself into the task of rebuilding. He oversaw every detail, often laying bricks and tiles by hand. Guided by the philosophy of “integrating intellectual and manual labor, creativity and analysis,” he sowed the seeds of modern industrial education in this remote and arid land.

Tragically, just as the school began to thrive, George suffered a foot injury during a basketball game. The wound became infected with tetanus, and he died on July 22, 1945, at the age of just 30. In his final moments, he scrawled a simple but powerful farewell: “My all to the Bailie School.”

At the memorial cemetery of Alley and Hogg in Shandan, I sat in silence, softly reading from his biography, as though having a conversation with him across time and space.

Though the years have passed, my uncle’s spirit remains vivid. Today, the Shandan Bailie School has evolved into Bailie Vocational College, a modern institution embodying its legacy and internationalist spirit. It continues to nurture generations of young people, carrying on the work Hogg left unfinished.

A scholarship for Chinese students was set up in his name at his alma mater Wadham College, Oxford University, and a room was set aside, also in his name, for the use of visiting Chinese scholars. Several groups of Oxford students have visited Shandan to experience first-hand how George’s educational vision continues to resonate in today’s China.

Witnessing his dreams blossom in this land fills me with admiration. In that short life-time, his cheerful perseverance, dedication and friendly consideration of everyone he came into contact with brought him close to the hearts of the ordinary Chinese people. He built a bridge of friendship and compassion between Britain and China, a spiritual legacy that transcends time.

To honor his legacy, I was given his middle name as my middle name, Aylwin. It is an ancient name of Celtic origin, meaning “wise friend” or “noble friend.” It is a continuation of our bloodline and, more importantly, of his ideals.

His story has taught me to love and respect one’s fellow human beings regardless of race, belief or cultural difference, to strive selflessly with compassion for a common positive goal, one can achieve truly astonishing things even in a short life tragically cut short. My uncle proved this with his actions, and I hope to carry on his spirit for the rest of my life.

(Mark Aylwin Thomas is the nephew of George Aylwin Hogg and the author of “Blades of Grass: The Story of George Aylwin Hogg.

Foreign

Shantou taps new growth momentum via AI token exports

Published

2 months ago

June 15, 2026

Our Reporter

By Li Gang, People’s Daily

As artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates the transformation of global industries, a new form of digital trade is emerging in the southern Chinese city of Shantou: exporting computing services measured not in physical goods, but in AI tokens.

In late April, Shantou, Guangdong province completed full-chain verification for what has become known as “token exports” — a model in which computing power remains within China while high-value AI services are delivered to overseas users. Within just one month, average daily token usage surged from 100 million to the tens-of-billions level.

The practical application of this model is already well underway.

Recently, when a user in Singapore activated an AI-powered toy and gave a simple command — “Tell me a fairy tale” — the spoken command traveled through the network directly to a dedicated overseas computing zone inside a computing center in Shantou.

Local deployed AI agents wrap up speech recognition in under one second and craft custom story content, firing the finished audio back to the Singapore-based toy device in as little as 0.1 seconds.

The user repeated the process multiple times, eventually listening to five stories in total. Approximately 100,000 tokens were consumed during the interaction and billed in real time at a rate of 2 yuan ($0.3) per one million tokens.

When payment arrived, a complete commercial cycle was achieved, marking the successful realization of Shantou’s “token export” model.

Tokens represent the smallest discrete calculation unit for large AI models to process information. They have become a key indicator of intelligent computing capacity and, increasingly, a new carrier of value in the digital economy.

Inside the China (Shantou) Pilot Zone for Economic and Cultural Cooperation with Overseas Chinese, token exports are already transforming the economics of electricity.

Today, overseas users across multiple countries and regions in Southeast Asia are accessing token services generated in Shantou.

“Data flows in from abroad and all processed outputs head back overseas, with zero compromise to end-user experience,” explained Cai Qichen, an engineer at the Shantou Branch of wireless carrier China Mobile. “Token costs have already been integrated into product service packages, making future usage more convenient.”

According to estimates from toy manufacturer SHOWMAC based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, using Shantou’s computing services reduces costs by more than 30 percent compared with directly purchasing overseas computing resources.

Meanwhile, inside computing centers, turning electricity into AI tokens delivers dramatic value appreciation. A kilowatt-hour of electricity, which comes at a cost of roughly 0.5 yuan($0.07) , can be transformed through AI computing into tokens and then exported at a price of 11 yuan($1.6), representing a twenty-two-fold increase.

As one of eastern Guangdong’s major offshore wind power bases, Shantou has already connected 1.2 million kilowatts of installed capacity to China’s power grid.

The electricity itself does not need to cross borders. Computing power remains within China. What gets exported instead are high-value digital services, turning electricity into a form of hard currency for cross-border digital trade.

Ultra-low network latency forms the technical backbone making token exports feasible.

“More than half of China’s outbound bandwidth carried by international submarine cables lands in Shantou, and the city is also home to five undersea trunk cables linking destinations worldwide,” said Hong Zhebin, chief technology officer of the international submarine cable landing station operated by the Shantou branch of wireless carrier China Telecom.

“The latency between Shantou and Singapore is only 32.7 milliseconds, quicker than the blink of an eye,” Hong added.

Hong Yu with the Shantou Branch of China Mobile, added that Shantou’s overseas computing services offer stable response speeds, regulatory compliance, and substantial cost advantages.

“Our pricing is only 1/3 to 1/2 that of mainstream international platforms, while customer retention exceeds 70 percent,” Hong told People’s Daily.

Yet building a complete end-to-end system is only the starting point. Shantou is now attempting to transform itself from a transit city for digital infrastructure into an ecosystem hub.

Leading computing companies and developers are gathering rapidly. Pilot platforms have passed acceptance reviews. Commercial closed loops have already emerged in applications ranging from AI toys to intelligent manufacturing, with large-scale operations expected soon.

Shantou’s Chenghai district has long been known as the “toy capital of China.” As AI becomes increasingly integrated with the toy industry, the city has launched an AI toy innovation center and the Shantou AI Laboratory, striving to become the “AI toy capital of China.”

At the exhibition space of one local tech firm sits Amy, an AI desktop robot capable of fluid multilingual conversation.

“It is equipped with a multilingual intelligent voice interaction system capable of real-time recognition and conversation in dozens of languages,” said the company’s general manager Chen Ruifeng.

The technology has already been integrated into multiple AI toy products exported to countries including the United Kingdom, Russia, and Japan.

Shantou’s token export model allows AI toy manufacturers to access domestic large language models at costs far below those of overseas alternatives.

“The cost of using overseas AI models can be dozens of times higher than domestic models,” Chen said. The company’s AI toys currently run on Chinese large models including DeepSeek and Doubao.

“Token exports have significantly increased both product value-added and international competitiveness,” he said.

The Shantou branch of wireless carrier China Unicom, together with a Guangdong-based tech firm, has established dedicated lines connecting Shantou and Vietnam, delivering cross-border computing services to Aachen Sv, a Chinese-invested fiber-optic company operating in Vietnam.

Vietnamese users accessing large models such as DeepSeek and Qwen experience extremely low latency with zero packet loss. “In less than a month, more than a dozen companies have approached us for consultations,” an employee of the Guangdong-based tech firm said.

Meanwhile, the Guangdong branch of China Mobile has launched an OpenClaw intelligent agent framework, providing integrated AI service packages that allow traditional toys to complete intelligent upgrades in as little as 15 days.

From toys to textiles, cross-border e-commerce, and high-end manufacturing, tokens are increasingly becoming the digital fuel powering Shantou’s industrial upgrading.

Foreign

Sanxingdui Museum transforms ancient relics into interactive experiences

Published

3 months ago

May 31, 2026

Our Reporter

By Song Haoxin, People’s Daily

What if museum visitors could truly interact with cultural relics rather than merely observe them through glass displays? At the Sanxingdui Museum in southwest China’s Sichuan province, a specially designed interactive hall is revolutionizing cultural engagement.

Within this 1,300-square-meter space, nearly every exhibit invites touch, operation, or participation. Visitors immerse themselves in installations inspired by the ancient Shu civilization, blending education with entertainment.

By trying on replicas of headwear on bronze statues discovered in Sanxingdui Ruins, for example, visitors can not only take photos of themselves but also learn about the symbolic meanings behind different headpieces.

Guests can don replicas of bronze statue headwear from the Sanxingdui Ruins, learning their symbolic meanings while capturing photos. Augmented reality allows dancing alongside virtual Sanxingdui figures for social media sharing. A creation zone even enables “time travel” to experience ancient bronze-casting and construction techniques.

These innovations transform traditional museum visits, offering deeper cultural understanding through hands-on interaction. “This hall emerged from extensive brainstorming,” explained Zhu Yarong, deputy director of the management committee of the Sanxingdui Ruins site.

“We’re transitioning from passive relic viewing to interactive engagement, bridging the gap between audiences and history.”

Previously, museum experiences were largely one-directional with limited engagement. Visitors viewed relics through display cases, usually stopping mainly to take photographs, with relatively limited forms of engagement. By liberating artifacts from display cases into interactive settings, Sanxingdui is pioneering a shift from didactic presentation to open cultural dialogue.

Traditional exhibition spaces remain popular, while digital innovations attract growing interest. A VR project employs digital twin technology to recreate 1:1 scale excavation sites — complete with protective shelters and cabins — placing visitors at the archaeological forefront.

Another project, Heaven and Earth Echoes — Sanxingdui Panoramic Sound and Vision Digital Art Theater, features an interactive panoramic LED dome with a diameter of 20 meters and a resolution approaching 16K. The massive dome creates a deeply immersive atmosphere. By waving digital torches in their hands, visitors can trigger sacred birds to circle above them across the dome, experiencing the ancient Shu civilization through an interplay of sound and imagery.

“The digital technology made me feel as if I were racing across the Mamu River. That sense of traveling through time was incredible,” said Hao Yong, a tourist from southwest China’s Chongqing municipality who came specifically to experience a virtual reality program.

From passive observation to active participation, Sanxingdui Museum continues introducing new interactive experiences that transform cultural relics into living carriers of dialogue and engagement, helping keep the sparks of Chinese civilization alive for new generations.

Foreign

A living testimony about MKA: The Aondoakaa that I know Written By Brahms Tor-Ikuan

Published

3 months ago

May 19, 2026

milcah

My people of Benue State,

I am not speaking to you today as a politician. I am speaking as a brother whose family was held up by Chief Mike Kaase Aondoakaa, MKA, when we had no one else to hold onto.

My elder brother, Verem Ukaa-Ikuan, was not just my blood. He was a very dear and close friend to Chief MKA. When my brother fell ill and was diagnosed with liver damage caused by poisoning, MKA didn’t treat it as someone else’s problem. He took it on as his own.

He worked closely with Verem during his time as Attorney General of the Federation, and when the sickness came, he moved immediately. Searches were conducted, and Apollo Hospital in India was earmarked for a liver transplant. Every travel arrangement was made personally by Chief MKA.

But we hit a wall. Verem was too weak to fly a long commercial flight. Only an air ambulance could get him to India alive. At that time, there was only one functional air ambulance in the entire country, owned by Julius Berger. It was completely out of reach for even the most high-profile citizens.

Chief MKA went all out. He did not give excuses. He did not delay. He used every connection and every ounce of influence he had to secure that air ambulance for my brother.

On the day it was secured, Barr. Terna Yaji, his Senior Special Assistant, called me a few minutes after 6pm. He told us to prepare Verem for departure and take him to Makurdi airport very early the following morning. I informed him, my brother passed on at exactly 6 o’clock a few minutes ago. I told Barr. Terna Yaji, and I saw a devastated MKA.

During the burial, Chief MKA was out of the country on national assignment. He was pained that he could not be there physically. His entire team, led by the late Onov Tyuulugh, represented him fully. And his message to us at the burial has never left me:

“If death were law, as the Attorney General, a law would have been made no matter what to ensure Verem will just not die but live forever.”

That is who Mike Kaase Aondoakaa is when nobody is watching. He does not abandon his people. He does not forget. He stood with our family then, and he has stood with us till date.

Now he is asking for the chance to govern Benue State.

Benue needs a governor with a heart like that. A governor who fights for you even when there’s no political gain. A governor who sees you as family, not as a vote.

I am standing with Chief Mike Kaase Aondoakaa for Governor of Benue State.
For compassion that moves to action.
For loyalty that does not fade.
For leadership that proves itself in the darkest hour.

Join me. Let us give Benue a leader who has already shown what he will do for us.

God bless Chief Mike Kaase Aondoakaa.
God bless Benue State.

Brahms Tor-Ikuan, a beneficiary of MKA’s benevolence writes from Makurdi