Very few knew anything specific about Christianity, and even fewer had been inside a church; I counted only one Christian out of a class of 35. The Church of England, with the Queen as its Supreme Governor and its bishops in the Lords, thus required much explanation. Indeed, only when you are called upon to justify Britain's unwritten constitution do you realise how bizarre it actually is. I let a video of Richard Dimbleby and the 1953 Coronation ceremony do the job for me. 

In China, morality may be distinct from religion, but as in the West there is a concern about declining traditional values, as demonstrated by rising divorce rates and increasingly liberalised attitudes towards sex. Some aspects of Britain's 1960s sexual revolution they understood (such as the legalisation of homosexuality), but feminism as an ideology or even a cause was lost on them, though they were equally bemused by the bare-breasted models on Page Three of the Sun.

As I described the changing development of the British family in the postwar years, one student inquired why was it that in Britain the state rather than the family was expected to care for the elderly. I'm not sure I gave him a satisfactory answer, yet his question had pointed to contrasting attitudes towards the family and indeed old age. The campus itself was an illustration of this. Of an evening, you were more likely to see children and grandmothers playing badminton than tanked-up students in fancy dress. 

Their knowledge of the British education system seemed to be based entirely on Harry Potter's Hogwarts. I made them take the 11-plus exam, which most found impossible — only four of them gained the necessary 80 per cent to make it to grammar school.

Chinese schools may teach a somewhat sanitised version of the nation's recent past, but memories are long and the oral tradition lives on in China. Mao worship (in Beijing at least) is something only indulged in by Western tourists on the hunt for Communist tat. Chinese national identity is founded on its history as a victim at the hands of successive invaders and its subsequent path towards national unity and prosperity. This is quite different from the British historical consciousness, which is dominated by its economic and imperial decline, only somewhat mitigated by victories in two world wars. I figured the best way to demonstrate this was to get them to sing both national anthems. "God Save the Queen" and the "March of the Volunteers" (of which the first line is "Arise! All those who don't want to be slaves!") could not project more contrasting notions of the relationship between the nation-state and its people.