Bridge Builders:
David Valentine

Britain in the 1950s was not always a place that encouraged global thinking. Rationing introduced during World War II lasted until 1954 for meat, and as late as 1958 for petrol. Meanwhile, an empire that had girdled the planet and lasted for centuries was shrinking into a Commonwealth as far-flung dominions sought independence. 

But David Valentine was a bright and inquisitive child. Born in 1952 in Ramsbottom, a quaintly-named village in the cotton-spinning county of Lancashire in northwest England, the young Valentine saw a picture that fired his empathy and imagination – and although he wasn't to know it, it was to start a long association with the other side of the planet. 

"When I was five, I saw in a textbook a picture of a family in China. They were obviously a poor family in a rice field, and it made me very curious," he tells CGTN, his gentle Lancastrian burr only slightly diminished by decades away from his birth county.

"I tried to compare – 'What would their life be like compared with that of my family?' At the time, I was one of five children – two more came later. So in my early life, I used to think about that family and wonder how their life became."

It's not that the five-year-old Valentine decided there and then to up sticks and track them down – "I never thought I'd visit China; I never thought I'd have the opportunity" – but early in his adult life, he left Lancashire never to return. 

The first step was the establishment of a consulate in Edinburgh, in 1998. Next was a potentially agonizing decision: who to pair up with?  

Although the earliest example of inter-municipal buddying-up dates back almost 12 centuries to the 836 agreement between France's Le Mans and Paderborn in what was not yet Germany, the international diplomatic act of finding a twin town, or sister city, began in earnest in Europe after World War II – when David Valentine was still in Lancashire wondering about the Chinese family in his textbook. It was popularized by Coventry, whose mayor reached out to Stalingrad, then Dresden and Belgrade – fellow sufferers of terrible wartime bombing – in a spirit of cross-boundary reconciliation and increased mutual understanding. 

Valentine and his Angus council colleagues knew they wanted a similar relationship with a Chinese city, but which one? In the end, it was Yantai. With a prefecture-level population of almost seven million, the largest fishing seaport in the province of Shandong may not seem a natural partner for the relatively quiet Angus, but Valentine could see certain similarities – and a winning desire for cooperation. 

"We were only a very small council in Scotland with 110,000 people – but nonetheless, the Yantai government was very keen to engage with us," he recalls. "It was a good choice because it's situated in the north-east of China, as we are in the north-east of Britain."

But there was more than just geography in common: there was a harmony among the areas' historically dominant industries… not to mention a recent newcomer.

"There's a very strong agricultural base," Valentine says of Yantai. "There is fishing – there are about 76 commercial species of fish. Oil exploration was commencing in the Bohai Sea just off the coast; we have the North Sea oil, which had been developed in the 1970s.

" And what's more, the people were very direct, very open – people that you could really do business with," he continues. "So we began to talk about company engagement. We introduced businesses. We went out there every two years with a trade mission and we also attended many other conferences."

The twinning wasn't just about business and the future. Each region can draw on its history, and this presented the opportunity for another match-up.

The people of Angus are understandably proud of Glamis Castle, a name that resonates down the centuries. Scottish king Malcolm II was murdered there in 1034, which may have helped William Shakespeare base Macbeth's title character there (the actual king of that name didn't live at Glamis, but let's allow the playwright some poetic license). 

The wife of a later Lord Glamis was burned at the stake for alleged witchcraft, and in the 20th century the castle was the childhood home of Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon – later to become the wife of King George VI and mother of Queen Elizabeth II (whose sister Princess Margaret was born at Glamis Castle). 

But China, too, has its history – millennia of it. Penglai Pavilion is one of China's Four Great Towers, with the Dan Cliffs being the departure point for the Eight Immortals, a Chinese legend so beloved it has drawn emperors to Penglai and remains popular even in today's secular times. 

It was therefore a natural choice to be twinned with Glamis Castle – but it wasn't the only one: 

"We twinned the Great Wall of China with Glamis Castle," smiles Valentine, who was again a prime mover behind the cross-country cooperation. 

"I remember going along to meet the Great Wall Society and telling them the story about the royal connection," he says. "But it was when I mentioned that it was the place that Shakespeare based his Scottish story, Macbeth. And of course, a lot of people know of Shakespeare and the people I spoke to had heard about Macbeth."

With the deal done, Valentine also pulled off a coup – not the Shakespearean sort, but the publicity variety.  

"I managed to get a Chinese flag put on the castle and the BBC World Service took a helicopter view of it when the twinning was announced in October 2006. And that created a huge sway of publicity."

Tartan isn't the only Scottish export to have become an acquired taste around the world: Another is whisky. (That's the usual spelling in Scotland and much of the rest of the world, and although in Ireland and the U.S. the spelling is more often whiskey with an 'e', the usual convention is to respect the country of each brand's origin.)

According to the Scotch Whisky Association, every second of the day an average of 44 bottles are exported to around 180 markets around the world – that's more than 1.3 billion bottles a year. No surprise, then, that it came to Valentine's attention as another bridge to China. 

"In 2004 I introduced the local distillery, owned by Angus Dundee Distillers, to China," he says. "And in fact, Angus Dundee Distillers have a team of 10 now in Shanghai and they have customers all over China."

But in the true spirit – no pun intended – of twinning and reciprocity, the whisky didn't just flow from Scotland to China. In 2018, a company in Inner Mongolia sought an expert to help them set up an authentic distillery on Chinese soil. 

"MengTai asked me if I could help them source a supply of equipment for the new distillery, and I introduced them to a company in Scotland who at that time I felt produced the best equipment for the industry," explains Valentine. "The Scottish company has supplied the equipment to actually produce the malt whisky, from the point at which the malt grain is delivered to right to where it is put into the barrel."

What might have been one-off start-up advice grew into something much more enmeshed. "I built a strategic partnership between Angus Dundee Distillers and MengTai, which has been a great source of assistance. And it's based on not just providing the advice, technical support that's required, but also buying bulk whisky from Angus Dundee Distillers – so it's a win-win situation."

Valentine is well placed to witness the changes in China over the past quarter-century, and he pinpoints a specific sector as the most notable. 

"There's no doubt the economy in China has changed vastly in those 25 years that I've been involved. I think the biggest change that's happened is the growth in the middle classes," he says. 

"The fact that China has taken so many hundreds of millions out of poverty means that there is a huge ability as well as appetite for what we've got. So there's a great opportunity for our companies here not just to import from China, but to supply food, drink and other products that we manufacture here."

This growth has caused a boom in several sectors, but one is distinctly recognizable to a man who moved to Scotland in 1971, very shortly after the game-changing discovery of oil fields under the North Sea. 

"Yantai has become a very important center for offshore oil, so a whole array of related industries has developed," he says. "Scottish companies have had opportunities as a result of that – not just the companies who are involved in the supply for those businesses, but also our educational establishments."

The era of fossil fuels will not last forever, but Valentine thinks China is ahead of the game. "China is making great strides with low-voltage electric cars – I think it's going to go right past what's happening in the West," he says. "And these new industries bring opportunities for our professionals and for some of our supply-based industries."

It's all served to strengthen the point that Valentine made in that 1995 presentation to the Angus councilors. But Valentine insists the process of understanding China must continue and grow. 

"China is fast becoming the super-economy that some of us said it would, 25 years ago," he says. "So it's absolutely vital that our youngsters know more about China, can speak the language, so that as we develop our own businesses and culture, that we can engage more effectively."

That's a two-way street, he says, with his friends in the far East very knowledgeable about Scotland's extraordinary history of overachievement. 

"I think Scottish culture has so much going for it and the Chinese are very much aware of the Enlightenment period and of Scotland's contribution to the world of science and engineering and so on, all the great inventions. I mean, for a small country, I think we're punching way above our weight," he smiles.

In the end, it's not a competition but an opportunity for cooperation – and indeed friendship. "I've got friends all over China – in Beijing, in Guangzhou, in Sichuan Province," he says. "I've visited so many different places and made so many friends. I thoroughly enjoy every moment of my engagement with China."

The young Valentine would be very impressed with how the story turned out. "If I go back to when I was a kid, thinking about the differences between my family and perhaps what it was like growing up in China and now seeing the huge improvements in people's lives – I've seen vast changes while I've been there. 

"So actually it's a very human experience, one that gives me a lot of self-satisfaction. It's not just about making more money or the business aspect of it. It's about people."