I currently teach two seminars to undergraduates at Externado University in Bogotá, Colombia, at eight thousand feet above sea level and - more to the point - at a distance of fifteen thousand miles from China: the Far East is both physically and conceptually half a world away from here. It barely features on the Colombian horizon - neither in politics nor in education, nor in the public imagination. Surveys that I have taken among my students at the beginning of my seminars testify to this omission in Colombian high school education. My courses therefore are designed as general introductions to China, for students of finance and international relations, and depending on the dialogue and level of interest generated, we move on to more specific themes.

These pictures sourced from ebeijing.gov.cn, english.cri.cn, sanhaostreet.com

Students in Colombia are not in the habit of reading a lot of books, let alone buying them. They prefer to photocopy them by chapter and the rows of copy shops near every centre of higher education in Bogotá do swift business. I think this is a shame, because bookstores are so wonderfully conducive to browsing and indeed full-on reading (even more so than libraries). I loved my student job at Probsthain's booksellers in London, opposite the main entrance to the British Museum. Bookshops in China are often five stories high, and lined not only with tens of thousands of books but also with crouching readers of all ages. And then there is the new phenomenon of digital readers: novels and newspaper articles are avidly consumed on mobile phones all across the subway. Perhaps less trees will be sacrificed this way, and more people will read ever more.

So in the hope that digital text files are more accessible, I regularly upload study materials and book chapters to the materials page - some I scanned at home. These are intended for the exclusive use of my students and will be removed at the end of term.