A Chinese Invasion of the UK? It’s all happened before….At least in Wales

CHINESE DRAGON INVADES WALTON HIGH STREET – Even many avid China Watchers of the highest order may have missed this breaking story in the widely read Clacton and Frinton Gazette (circulation 14,320 apparently) that a Chinese dragon had invaded Walton High Street (click here and you can see a lovely picture of the dragon that invaded Walton and the sinister manipulators of this devious scheme). Actually, despite the worrisome headline, it was all for educational purposes – the wonderfully named Headmistress of Walton Primary School, Susie Bliss, wants her young charges to learn more about China and so they started with dragons and new year and all that…

Still, reminded me that the UK has been invaded by China before – round about 1916 if PG Wodehouse is to be believed. Wodehouse wrote Swoop!, or How Clarence Saved England in 1909 as a short satire on the then popular genre of invasion literature. It tells the amusing story of a host of foreign armies all invading England in a rather haphazard and uncoordinated way yet being quite successful. The British don’t really mind too much until Clarence rouses them to arms. Among the invading powers is an army from China who for some reason decide to land in Wales. However, as with many people who’ve rashly decided to holiday in Wales over the years, they end up walking around in circles getting muddier and wetter and eventually decide the whole venture is a waste of time and go home.

It is all actually quite amusing, and free on Gutenberg to download. PG Wodehouse seems to remain surprisingly popular – I was recently in India and bookshops there devote entire shelf units to Wodehouse collections while I note that the BBC has recently done Blandings, based on Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle stories.

Anyway Walton, Wales, Wodehouse…i have always maintained that this blog does rather revel in the obscure…