Diplomatic pouch: With Mike Peters

Post Danmark has teamed up with China Post for a collaboration on knowledge sharing and stamp production - and to produce Hans Christian Andersen stamps in China. Danish Ambassador Friis Arne Petersen hosted an event organized by Post Danmark for its Chinese business partners, and members of the Danish Trade Council were present. A collection of Chinese-designed stamps with motifs from Andersen's fairy tales will be published at the end of the year by both China and Denmark. The Danish stamps will also be sold to stamp collectors in China Post shops. "Both sides have learned a lot from this collaboration," said Lene Reipuert, manager of stamps for the Danish postal service. "This is the first time China Post, as well as Post Danmark, have worked with designing other countries' stamps."

The Danish Chamber of Commerce in China has donated teaching equipment worth 1 million yuan (109,550 euros) to the Yishui School in Shandong province. Duan Weiling, general manager of the chamber, said she hopes the gift of sports and laboratory equipment, plus 10,500 sets of stationary, including notebooks and books, is the beginning of a platform that the business group can use to help improve teaching conditions in schools in the future. The secretary of the Yishui County Board of Education, Xia Tongbo, attended the donation ceremony, which was organized by the teaching inspector, Wu Qingyu, who is also a member of the board of the county's Education Committee.

UK Ambassador Sebastian Wood hosted a countdown-clock celebration last week to mark "one year to go" to the London Olympics. Zuo Zhiyong, deputy secretary-general of the International Olympic Committee, and Yang Xiuli, China's gold medal winner at the 2008 Beijing Olympics met at the ambassador's residence for the event. "With one year to go," Wood said, "we are on track to deliver on all our commitments."

Tormod C. Endresen, Norway's consul general in Guangzhou, hosted a dinner at his residence for Chinese students in Norway who are in China on summer holidays and for students and teachers on their way to Norway. The dinner was part of the kick-off for NorAlumni in South China last month, as Chinese students with links to Norway gathered in Guangzhou to exchange impressions. "Chinese are now the biggest group of foreign students in the country, reinforcing the growing number of personal ties between Norway and China," the embassy said on its website.

Waste from restaurants, eateries and canteens, in the form of cooking oil, fruit peels and vegetable scraps, is going to be converted into energy and fertilizer in a biogas plant that the Swedish company Purac recently signed a contract to construct in Chongqing. Swedish Ambassador Lars Fredn and Chongqing's Vice-Mayor Ling Yueming attended the ceremony as Zhao Yingjie, Purac China's president, signed a contract with Zhang Xiangqing, chairman of Chongqing Sanitary Group, to construct the plant. The plant will produce energy in the form of biogas, biodiesel and manure. The manure will be used as a nutrient in food production. Purac, a part of the Lckeby Water Group, signed a contract in Chongqing in 2009 to construct the first phase of this project: a plant for managing the same type of restaurant waste. The biogas that the plant produces is converted into electricity after desulphurization.

Embassy news can be sent to mike.peters.cd@gmail.com