A couple of years ago I was chatting to a Chinese student and asked him what subject he was studying.

Much to my astonishment, it was 18th century Chinese porcelain.

All I could think of replying was that he had come a long way for that.

Having read Jung Chang’s novel Wild Swans, with an account of the systematic smashing of all their preceding culture by Mao Tse Tung’s Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, I wondered whether there might be more 18th century Chinese porcelain in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford than the whole of China?

I am glad that some of it found its way here to be appreciated and kept and for the Chinese to be able to buy it back now.

Margaret Lindley, St John’s Road, Tackley