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Prince & Princess of Wales

#RoyalVisitChina: Football, a festival and Paddington Bear for Prince William

Prince William had a chance to take a break from his diplomatic role and have some fun on Tuesday, as he played a game of football at a Shanghai school as part of his ongoing tour of China.

However, immaculately dressed in a blue suit, the Prince only managed to kick the ball once as he took part in the five-a-side game at the Nanyang High School. After the match, he retired to the sidelines to watch the students being put through their paces by their coaches. Football is about to become a part of the curriculum in Chinese schools, and the British Council runs a scheme called Premier Skills, in which coaches and referees are trained by England’s Premier League.

William, who is an avid fan of the game, and president of the Football Association, spoke to the students after they had finished. “The Duke told the children that if they keep on working hard hopefully one day they might play in the Premier League,” said Paul Hughes, a former coach at Reading, Millwall and Southampton football clubs, who now travels the world as part of the British Council scheme. “He asked them if they knew who David Beckham was, and said that if they got involved in football then one day they might meet him.”

Later, Prince William attended the British Council Global Alumni Awards, where he met nine Chinese graduates who had studied in the UK. They told him about the difference that being educated in the UK had made to their lives, and one of the students even told The Prince about how he had studied law and was now a judge in Shanghai. “I’ll make sure I’m on my best behaviour while I’m here,” William replied, laughing.

Having opened the Great Festival of Creativity on Monday night, Prince William returned to the festival on Tuesday. The three day long festival demonstrates the best of British creativity, and features organisations such as British Airways, Jaguar Land Rover and the BBC.

At the opening, the Prince said: “It is a platform not only for our famed and still thriving creative sectors, such as film, art and media. But it is also a platform for the creativity and inventiveness that British firms apply in a wide variety of sectors, like healthcare and education.”

On Tuesday night, Prince William visited the Shanghai Film Museum, before attending the premier of the film ‘Paddington’ in China. While on the red carpet, the Royal shook paws with Paddington Bear himself. Afterwards, he joked that his one year-old son George would have been quite envious of him for having met the famous bear.

Prince William’s tour of China will continue with a visit to the Yunnan province to visit a nature reserve and meet injured elephants on the cards. The Prince is passionately opposed to wildlife trafficking and especially the killing of elephants for ivory. Asia, and primarily China, had been one of the largest markets for ivory in the world until last week, when China banned ivory imports for a year, in an effort to reduce the demand for elephant tusks.

Featured photo credit: Scudamore’s Punting Cambridge