Simon Lever, British consul-general in Chongqing, acted as tour guide at a "Bond is Great Britain" launch event to mark the premiere of the new film Skyfall. The latest Bond film has been wowing filmgoers worldwide. For those not content with simply watching the film, Lever explored the birthplace of this now-legendary character and showed the dramatic locations depicted in it.

Britain's rich heritage and culture, along with its expertise in filmmaking, have been drawing filmmakers to the country for years, he said. Large parts of Skyfall were shot in iconic London locations, including the National Gallery, Whitehall and Greenwich, as well as the wild scenery around Glencoe and Glen Etive in the Scottish Highlands where the family of the author of the original Bond novels, Ian Fleming, owned a home. Visitors can also stay at Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland, he said, which was used as the emergency MI6 headquarters in The World Is Not Enough.

China's Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, has held a group meeting with EU ambassadors at the invitation of Ambassador Markus Ederer, head of the delegation of the European Union to China. Yang met envoys of the 27 EU member states and Croatia, which will join the EU on July 1. The diplomats exchanged views on China-EU relations and international and regional hotspot issues of common concern.

Nicole Bricq, France's minister of foreign trade, has just visited China on the heels of a visit by Pierre Moscovici, minister of economy and finance, for the close of a recent trade dialogue. Bricq met Chen Deming, China's minister of commerce, and Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's main planning agency.

'Traveling today in an Airbus aircraft from Shanghai to Beijing, Guangzhou, elsewhere in Asia, Europe or America, you realize that the plane would not exist without the Elyse Treaty," Germany's consul-general in Shanghai Wolfgang Rohr said last week as Germany and France celebrated the 50th anniversary of the treaty of friendship between the two countries. In an article for China Business News headlined "The Franco-German friendship is an engine of European integration," the French Ambassador to China, Sylvie Bermann, and the German Ambassador, Michael Schaefer, noted that the fact that their countries "jointly lead major industrial projects like Airbus was unthinkable 50 years ago" in the wake of two world wars.

Innovation Norway and the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association jointly organized a senior forum on offshore wind at the Kempinski Hotel in Beijing this month, the embassy of Norway said, with more than 80 stakeholders from companies and organizations in both countries attending.

The seminars focused on how China can draw on the experiences of the offshore wind industry in Europe to accelerate the development of offshore wind domestically. Shi Pengfei, vice-president of the association, said Norway is in the lead in the development of maritime technology and offshore wind energy, and that China and Norway stand to gain a lot from increased cooperation.

Send embassy news to michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 01/25/2013 page31)