University challenge
November 4, 2015About 1,000 students packed two conference halls via a video link to attend a talk given by Kevin on Tue evening. The event took place at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing where Kevin graduated more than 30 years ago. He talked about how he persisted with English as an undergraduate, his time at BBC World Service and the recent state visit to the UK by the President of China. It was one and half hour of extraordinary stories punctuated by laughter and applauses from the audience at regular intervals. Prior to the talk, articles and photos of Kevin in action during the state visit went viral on social media in China. At one point, ‘Queen’s interpreter’ ranked sixth in the top ten search terms on the biggest microblog site in China, registering 150,000 searches.
