Books by Keith Robinson

This book draws together previous research into Sir Robert Hart's musical activities with new research about his musical interests. A lot of the changes that took place in the 19th Century in the attitude towards music can be seen in his life. He was seemingly a self-taught violinist but he practised every day, studied etudes, bought the latest Dodd bows and was not content to be a mediocre performer. It's a myth to think that Hart's Brass Band was the first Chinese Brass Band in China because the Jesuits were much more important in the initial development of Chinese Brass Bands. What makes him special was his influence with his work colleagues and his interest in Chinese music. George Carter Stent acknowledged this when he wrote: "(he) is ever ready to assist by his countenance and support any work tending to increase an interest in, and knowledge of, China and the Chinese."His string Orchestra, although historically it has received much less attention, is in fact of critical importance. The Chinese Military Bands were ensured of growth because of the endless conflicts that occurred, but the Chinese western symphony orchestra's development can be shown to be a legacy of Hart's String Band. It may just have been an extraordinary felicitous coincidence that Hart's protégée Dora van Mollendorff should be the teacher of Xiao Youmei, who then returned to Beijing and recruited many of Hart's Band Boys for the first Chinese Symphony Orchestra.

2016 is the 150th Anniversary of the first Chinese Government approved visit to England, by the learned Manchu BinChun. The book draws on the diaries of those involved, the Government papers and also newspaper reports from the time to follow his route and bring into sharper focus some of the famous people that he met. The British Government's aims were broadly to try and support the Qing Government as it tried to modernise and thus help it preserve its independence and also to create a future market for British trade. Politically it was a failure, but perhaps BinChun's importance is that he was a pioneer of public diplomacy, and it is these lessons that are most relevant to us today as we once again seek to engage with China.

This book offers a completely new sequence for learning Chinese writing. If foreign students start learning to write Chinese by first inputting Radicals on the computer, they will make faster progress in being able to remember the vocabulary, and their transition to writing Chinese by hand will be more successful. At every stage in this carefully thought out sequence, the student should be encouraged to also practice what they have learnt on computer by writing the characters out by hand. The biggest problem that students have with learning Mandarin Chinese is being able to write Chinese. It is a daunting task because of the sheer number of different characters involved and also because until now each character has been treated as a unique and separate entity. The time needed to commit all this vocabulary to memory and gain fluency and facility in writing Chinese is immense, but using this method it will make learning faster.

In English it is possible to suggest subtle changes in meaning by altering the tone of your voice. However in Chinese this is not an option, because altering the tone of your voice could completely change the meaning of the word. To achieve the same affect, the Chinese use Modal Particles. Modal Particles frequently appear in written Chinese and especially in "on line" Blogs or e mails and can be confusing to the foreign students, because they are rarely mentioned in text books. This study will fully explain their use, and including judicially chosen Modal Particles will enable the students' work to sound more idiomatic.