End of summer
Our Old China Hands Lunch 6 September 2025 marked the end of summer and holidays. Beijing just had recovered from the turmoil of the military parade of 3 September, Dongchen District had not yet removed the security barriers – Chaoyang had it all cleaned up.
With many of our members busy, the turnout of 25 was reasonable. A few new faces were welcomed.
The menu, see the pictures:
- sliced smoked salmon stuffed with seafood and garden greens OR poached eggs with wine merchant sauce OR cream of tomato soup
- fricandeau of beef served with hot cherry and mashed potatoes OR thin-sliced beef tenderloin with black pepper sauce served with vegetables and Belgian frietes OR red snapper Mediterranean style served with daily vegetables and mashed potatoes
- daily desert
The following lunch is planned for Friday 3 October 2025 (yes, in the holiday week).
Again Gilbert in the news.
It took a long time for my interview to come out, done 23 February 2025 in my office by Chris and his team with a complex equipment setup.
On 10 September it finally came out on YouTube and it’s worth the wait. Chris did a professional job as always.
The interview by Chris Petersen-Clausen is part of the series “Living History”: Stories from the Opening of China is the new series of documentary interviews with Chinese, Americans and others about the experiences they had in the period between the reopening of China under Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and the Shanghai Expo in 2010. These crucial years and the people-to-people exchanges made during this time are a period whose memory we want to preserve with this series. Many of the stories that are being recorded have never before been documented for the public. If you, too have a story from this time that you would like to tell us please do get in touch with Chris at chris@memostothefuture.com – they are continuously filming more interviews.
So here is my story in “Living History”: Gilbert Van Kerckhove – Building the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing.
It all began with an unusual job interview in 1980. Gilbert Van Kerckhove, a young Belgian engineer, was interviewing for a job that nobody else seemed to want. That led him to Beijing, where the engineer and businessman built power stations, the Jin Mao skyscraper, changed a law prohibiting the construction of subways and served as Negotiations Director for the construction of the Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 Olympics.
