When most people get a Chinese takeaway they are happy with a chow mein.

But one former Maidstone resident came home with an ancient model army of warriors.

Jane Portal, Chinese and Korean curator at the British Museum, was instrumental in bringing China’s Terracotta Army to Britain for the first time.

And she returned to Bearsted this week to talk about her experiences to raise money for a relic closer to home - St Mary's Church, Thurnham.

Mrs Portal grew up in Barming and Bearsted, where her parents John and Joan Bowerman still live, and attended Loose Primary School and Maidstone Girls’ Grammar School between 1966 and 1973.

Although Mrs Portal now lives in London and Cambridge, she still has strong ties to her home village and spoke about the Terracotta Army at a talk in the Memorial Hall, Bearsted, on Tuesday - a major coup for the village as the London exhibition has been one of the most popular in the museum’s history.

Mr Bowerman, 81, of Ware Street, said: “Jane and the director of the British Museum, Neil McGregor, went over to China to agree the terms of some of the warriors being given on loan and she can obviously speak Chinese so she really was instrumental in getting the exhibition up and running. We’re enormously proud of her.”

After attending Maidstone Girls’ Grammar, where she was head girl in 1973, Mrs Portal won a place at Cambridge to study Chinese.

In a book she wrote for the British Museum, Mrs Portal says she was going to study French, but made the switch because she realised that in decades to come China would be important both politically and economically.

Mrs Bowerman said: “In retrospect it was a good choice. After Cambridge she got a British Council scholarship to study Chinese archaeology at Beijing University and began in 1980. I actually believe she was the first woman to do so, which is a pretty amazing thing.”

Mrs Portal then studied Korean in London and at Yonsei University in Seoul before taking the job at the British Museum in 1987, where she heads the Chinese section in the museum’s department of Asia. She is also curator of the museum’s Korean collection and the Korea Foundation Gallery.

Mr Bowerman said: “When Jane first went over there after gaining her degree at Cambridge she had to be able to speak Chinese, so she travelled the length and breadth of China in her university holidays on a very tight budget, getting to grips with the language.

“There was a lot of interest in China at the time. All the young people thought China was the society of the future. In those days they were all full of idealism.”

The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army opened at the British Museum in September and was the culmination of years of hard graft for Mrs Portal.

It is the largest collection of the world-famous Xi’an warriors currently outside China and gives an insight into the first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, who lived more than 2,000 years ago.

Chris Lisle, treasurer for St Mary’s Church, Thurnham, said the talk raised £800. The church needs £120,000 of restoration work.

He added: “The talk was very, very well received and Jane gave a fascinating insight into her family’s long connections with the church as well as the background to the talks with the Chinese authorities. It was great to have someone so well-known in their field.”