The Arts Club is a London private members club founded in 1863 by, amongst others, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Lord Leighton in Dover Street, Mayfair, London, England. Today it is a meeting place for men and women involved in the creative arts either professionally or as patrons.
The Arts Club was a hub of the arts during the 19th-century and, although a social venue, it was known to be a place where influence could be exerted and careers developed. It was seen as the powerhouse behind the dealings of the Royal Academy. Its members and guests included Dickens, Millais, Whistler, Kipling, Monet, Rodin, Degas and Turgenev. As early as 1891, James Whistler, one of the Arts Club's leading members, broke away to found the rival Chelsea Arts Club.
The Arts Club has continued to provide a forum and meeting place for those involved in all the arts. The visual arts predominate the professional artists amongst today's membership; the vast majority of Royal Academicians still present amongst the members. Members not professionally active as artists include art dealers, gallery owners, artists' agents, as well as those who simply have an amateur or recreational interest in the arts.
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces; five autonomous regions; four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing); two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau); and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.
Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second-largest country by land area, and either the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of measurement. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.
João Pedro dos Santos Gonçalves (born 15 April 1982 in Beja), known as China, is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays for Cypriot club Nea Salamis Famagusta FC as a left back.