Well I've nearly finished packing ready for my flight to Beijing tomorrow! I've been looking forward to this for a while now, my very own Smart Talk series with the British Council!
We'll be visiting five cities in three provinces in six days, quite the whirlwind tour! I'll be presenting my talk to students in three universities: Suzhou, Lanzhou and Anhui. The British Council have asked me to talk about my start in life, how I got in to singing, learning Chinese and my time at Nanjing University, how I became a professional singer songwriter and how my life is now. As part of my talk I'll be playing exclusive song clips, one is a new song that will be on my next album, and I'll also be playing a clip of the demo of 'Glorious', the second single from my début album Shine, to show how song writing starts and how a song develops through to the fully produced version on the album.
Past British Council Smart Talk series speakers include Thomas Heatherwick (designer of the London Olympic cauldron), Patrick Stuart and Jimmy Choo, so I was so happy when they asked me to give a talk on my life, my education and my career. Everything is prepared and ready, but it's still going to feel strange walking on to a stage to talk rather than to sing!
Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China, so to keep up with the adventure, please add me on wechat (mary-jess) and weibo (@Mary-Jess美洁) where I'll be posting updates as much as I can. Thanks!
One of the posters for the Smart Talk series.