Forget Mao Zedong and the Terracotta Army: if you really want to understand modern China you need to get into The Dragon Tongue Squad.

That was the message yesterday from the organisers of China Now, a festival which is about to bombard Britons with contemporary Chinese culture on an unprecedented scale, from visual arts to music to tea making, via football and mànhuà comics.

As “China's best and most established hip hop crew”, The Dragon Tongue Squad will be appearing at the Royal Opera House next month, one of more than 800 events taking place across Britain between Chinese New Year and the Beijing Olympics in August.

The aim is to make Britons as aware of China as a cultural powerhouse as they are of its booming economic and athletic potential.

Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, said: “It’s phenomenally important that we understand what makes China tick culturally, historically, politically and economically.

“We are bringing over the National Ballet of China but we are also trying to surprise people and give them a different perspective on China with acts like the Dragon Tongue Squad. Are they any good? We’ll see but I’m told that they are.”

The idea for China Now came from the British business community and it has been two years in the planning.

Stephen Green, Chairman of China Now and Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings plc described the scale of the programme as “unique”.

“We are all aware of how China is changing the balance of the world economy but it isn’t just doing that. China is a country with a rich and proud cultural tradition. But it has not ossified and it is not looking back to the Terracotta Warriors and calligraphy. It is effervescent and developing rapidly. I very strongly believe that we need to engage culturally because there’s so much that we can learn from each other. ”

There is ground to make up. According to a survey carried out for HSBC last year 46 per cent of Chinese people knew that the British Prime Minister was either Gordon Brown or Tony Blair. In contrast only seven per cent of Britons identified Hu Jintao as President of China, the same number that thought Mao was still in charge.

China Now will spend 6 months attempting to make the country a little more familiar through exhibitions, performances and activities spanning film, comics, art, literature, music, design, science, technology, business, education and sport.

There will be Shaolin monks at Sadler’s Wells, an acrobatic Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House and the Flying Dragon Circus in Newcastle.