"You can't have people going around getting leaked stuff from other powers who are more powerful than Britain, and printing them and not thinking that's not going to have an appalling effect," fumed one affronted senior British mandarin, his efforts to pull a fast one on developing countries in vain.
"AN ACQUIRED taste, much of it bitter" was how the late Percy Cradock, a British foreign-office mandarin, described China, a country he spent a lifetime studying.
In 2006 we sought a new model: partnering with a British manager fluent in Mandarin and familiar with Chinese culture, I established a research and development team in the Chinese university city of Xi'an to deliver IT services using web-based platforms.
Food Get a window table overlooking Hyde Park at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, named after a British "laboratory chef" famous for his modern concoctions like "meat fruit" (a mandarin orange, chicken liver and foie gras parfait); for Asian, try Hakkasan; for French, Le Gavroche; and for seafood, Scotts.
He was a consummate mandarin (his mother was a patrician from Chicago, his father a British officer), with an exclusive following — Babe Paley, Austine Hearst, Dominique de Menil, and Marietta Tree.
"They use lots of 'Hong Kong Mandarin,' which is like describing a New Yorker's story with a British accent".
This was the kindly mandarin Tony Blair asked to look into how Srichand Hinduja, a rich Indian, got a British passport at his second time of asking, having been turned down the first time because of his frequent absences from Britain and doubts about his character.
"Threatening a British citizen.
