More pictures of the yesterday’s visit to LONG ZHEN Senior Care home!
Our young people did such a great job. The pictures tell the story…
Rotary
November 2015: a busy month for Rotaract Beijing
On 16 November one of the well-attended weekly meetings in The Bookworm, every Monday evening 8 to 9 pm. We even had three Rotarians! All this to prepare the upcoming events.
(note the light in The Bookworm is RED, thus the special colors…)
One activity: “Young Professionals Networking Event” 19 November:
The Beijing Rotaract Club in conjunction with The Bookworm presented “How to Run A Business in China And Other Useful Insights.” Location: The Bookworm Beijing from 19:30 to 22:00.
The colloquium’s purpose was to bring together professionals, both foreign and Chinese, to come and learn more about business processes in China.
This year we featured three distinguished speakers:
Christoph Wandt, Managing Director at the Screen group,
Nathan Siy, CEO of Evoke motorcycles,
John Horniblow, of Safia Trading (Beijing) Ltd., Digital Jungle and photojournale.com
After the presentations we had a networking session.
On Sunday 22 November, Rotaract volunteers braved the snow to visit the Skilled Nursing Home for retired seniors, in Laiguangying. Our volunteers entertained the seniors by playing games, calligraphy and more. Great job!
The next upcoming event: Artjam Saturday 28 November.Visit the website http://www.rotaractbeijing.org for more details.
Rotary lunch and agriculture in China
During our Tuesday lunch at the Kempinski, we had as speaker Ms. Philippa Jones, Managing Director of China Policy. Topic: Feeding China: you have not seen anything yet!
See here an overview by our Club:
China’s agriculture may have reached an inflection point. Grain production is at all time highs, as are reserves. Agriculture, like industry is suffering from overcapacity. But costs have skyrocketed and land in many areas is exhausted and, in some others, polluted. For the last thirty years the government has been more or less happy to let the agriculture system continue, and since accession to the WTO in 2001, has gradually increased subsidies to support prices. This is now changing. Funds are being directed to the countryside and a massive legislative agenda is underpinning an aspirational desire for change on the part of the state.
Changing diets, as incomes grow, are also driving agricultural change. China own production of corn, mostly used for feeding pigs, and its imports of soybeans (60% used for animal fodder) have risen sharply.
The presentation illustrated changing production and imports of basic commodities, compared China’s production to the rest of the world, described the dilemma of price support amid rising costs, including storage of reserves and detailed the post-WTO accession rise of subsidies.
To counter the issues facing agriculture the administration has an aggressive agenda to upscale farms, increase mechanisation, make full use of big data, introduce e-commerce, consolidate markets and last but not least elevate peasants into professional farmers.
This new agenda is being implemented against many insuperable obstacles. Land reform is a central problem. Many in government and the Party cannot sanction the possibility of a landless class of peasants, should land become freely saleable. As young people settle in the cities, the countryside lack incentives to bring them back home. Xi Jinping himself has asked who will feed China? Constraints of exhausted land and lack of water will only exacerbate the situation.
Philippa expects a bumpy ride over the next few years as new models are tested ,and China attempts to integrate further into global agricultural markets.
(thanks to Celine for the pictures)
I also gave a short comment on my trip along the Yangtze River.
Rotaract Beijing back to full speed
During and after the quiet summer break, the new team of the Beijing Rotaract Club has been pretty busy.
We had several good meetings: 20 July in Luga’s, 24 August, 28 September in Homeplate BBQ, 12 and 19 October in The Bookworm.
I will miss the upcoming meetings as I will be away from Beijing taking part in a documentary on The Three Gorges.
Beijing Rotary lunches in Kempinski Hotel
The Rotary Club of Beijing has its regular lunch every week on Tuesday in Kempinski Hotel, in a private room, starting around 12:30 and finished 2 pm sharp.
Visiting Rotarians are always welcome and we see people attending from all over the world. As we are the only club in the region, we are kind of unavoidable. Guests are welcome but must be invited by a Rotarian. No walk-ins admitted.
See here some pics from lunches this month, on 16 and 23 June.
I was happy to see again Rtn Norbert, an old friend who worked in Beijing in the past and whom I introduced into Rotary. He is now back to Germany where he has joined a local Rotary club (Leverkusen-Opladen). He exchanged banners with our club.
Attendance is now low with summer coming. As usual I have to jump in as Sergeant-at-Arms, a kind of permanent title I have.
Nice to get a personal mug… here dedicated to my involvement with Rotaract.