His comments on China During a royal visit to China in 1986, Philip described Beijing as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed." He also quipped while speaking at a World Wildlife Fund meeting the same year: "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." As per a report on the South China Morning Post, it came on October 16, 1986, on the first and only British state visit to China, when the duke, the chancellor of Edinburgh University since 1953, met students from the institution who were starting a year of learning. The article says, however, that the reporting only came about thanks to a mix-up, adding that the Chinese saying that puts his quip into context did not feature.