China’s man in Dublin is a Joyce fan

DOCTOR Yue Xiaoyong has been the Chinese Ambassador to Ireland for the past two years, after he replaced the former ambassador Xu Jiango in June 2016.

He is a self-described Joyce fan, having read Ulysses and Dubliners, and said in an interview that he loves the work of George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett.

Before arriving in Ireland, Dr Xiaoyong spent time in the Middle East, serving as the ambassador to Qatar, and then Jordan.

He worked as a teacher in Wuhan University in China in the early 1980s, before moving into diplomacy. In 1986 he started working in the embassy in the UK.

After spending the 1990s working in the embassy in the US during the Bush and Clinton administrations, he moved back to China in 2002. He received his doctoral degree in political science in 2005 from Peking University.