MBL's Goal

To set up the bridge

• Open Eyes to Today’s China

Cooperating with Toby Eady Associates ltd, MBL organised more than 50 publishers, literary agents and professors from the West to visit China to engage in cultural dialogues and debates with over 500 Chinese writers, professors, and publishers in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian and Nanjing in 2004 and 2005.

Our goal was to create opportunities for greater literary and educational ties between China and the West in the future.

MBL is working on organising another trip in 2006.

• Chinese Art Students’ Exhibition

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Cooperating with China Art University, Shanghai Art University and Sichuan Art University, MBL is locating student artists within China eager to share their art with the Western world and networking in the UK for venues to display their work.

Two successful trial exhibitions held in May of 2005 show that this is an excellent way to showcase artists from China, as well as allow the Western viewers immediate access to the current pulse of China on many levels – social, political and economic.

Future exhibitions will ensure that Chinese art students have the FREEDOM to finally express their works of art in the West, especially since there are still some press control policies in effect in China today.

MBL Cultural Events

MBL organised three big events in London in 2005:

• A Chinese New Year Kids Event at Whiteley’s Shopping Centre, in which more than one hundred families were involved.

• A Summer Event at Kensington Gardens, with a performance by Chinese children and art games for kids.

• A Moon Festival event at Shanghai Blues Restaurant, at which more than 250 business and media representatives were present.

**MBL also has monthly student activities such as the Chopsticks Students’ Drinks Party. This event, held in a casual atmosphere, allows Chinese students and Westerners to get to know each other outside of an academic setting. The Chinese benefit by learning more about what it means to live in Britain, while at the same time sharing their own stories of growing up in China.**

 

A Bridge between Birth Culture and Adoptive Culture

• Published Work - MBL Website, Children’s Journal (English) and Magazine Columns

Website - the MBL London office and Beijing Centre are working together in order to help adoptive families communicate with each other across 27 countries. MBL believes that through this type of exchange, adoptive families throughout the world will have a greater understanding of what it means to be Chinese – a knowledge they can then in turn pass to their adopted Chinese children.

Children’s Journal - there are three focuses of the MBL children’s journal: Language practice in Chinese and English, a guide to Chinese traditional handmade toys and an introduction to Chinese folk tales. The journal was designed for children adopted from China, Chinese living outside China and anyone with an interest in China. MBL produced two issues for 2004 and 2005, each with 5000 copies. Unfortunately, the journal has had to be discontinued because of a lack of funds as well as because, according to the General Administration of Press and Publication of the PRC, foreign organisations are not permitted to produce publications within China.

Magazine columns - we are planning to open magazine columns in the UK and China with letters from adoptive and Chinese families, from different countries, to help Chinese children have conversations with different people in their early age. We also want to publish articles in China written by non-Chinese about their experiences of China, in order to show understanding between different peoples and cultures.

• Activities - Nanjing Children’s Palace >>more

The MBL Children Arts and Music Centre is based in Nanjing Children’s Palace. The centre provides music and art courses to children in China, which are not given primary importance in schools, so that they can cultivate their artistic talents and at the same time get more in touch with Chinese traditional culture.

The Children’s Palace also serves as a base for members of MBL – adoptive families and overseas Chinese – to communicate with Chinese children. By first setting up pen friends through the website, adopted and overseas Chinese will have the chance to make friends from China and learn more about their life, eventually visiting them in the Children’s Palace.

The Children’s Palace has run a lot of international projects in the past several years, such as producing a Chinese version of “No Adults Allowed”, arranged by English literary agent Toby Eady and American director John T. Binkley, and holding an exhibition of ‘Smile to the World’.

• Travel – Family Exchange Programme >>more

Every child passing from childhood to adulthood will have a lot of questions about his/her own ‘original culture’. We would like to help these Chinese sons and daughters who have grown up in a foreign country to find an answer to their questions, to enrich their hearts, to broaden their minds.

Coordinated by a travel company based in Nanjing, MBL has organised one week, two week and three week itineraries for general visits to China for adoptive families and overseas Chinese from the MBL membership. It has also organised itineraries to visit the countryside and also an adopted child’s hometown or birthplace.

The travel company, through its links around China, also carries out research about poor and disabled girls for the ‘Support Chinese Girls’ project – 8 of which we have already helped – as well as on Chinese cultural information from different parts of the country.

A Bridge between the Poor and the Rich

• Support Disabled Chinese Girls >>more

Every year, MBL selects disabled girls from throughout the countryside of China. In 2005, MBL supported Qian Hongyan and Zhang E, helping them not only with their medical treatments and living costs, but also helping them to plan for the future by taking courses such as English and computer studies.

• China Volunteers Training

MBL will begin training volunteers in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing in 2006. These volunteers will be equipped with the knowledge needed to work within impoverished communities throughout China assisting families and their children aim for a better life.

Following the training, volunteers will understand what it means to live in a rural region of China – what the residents face on a daily basis, what their basic needs of life are, and what is involved in working with families unaccustomed to receiving volunteer intervention from any organisation.

 

MBL is seeking experienced writers for future projects to promote MBL’s goals, as well as articles focusing on: Chinese adopted children and their lives in the West, MBL’s various activities, or any other events that will demonstrate the growing relationship between China and the West.

Your support will improve the lives of Chinese children from country to country, village to village.