Beijing Rotary and Rotaract

Rotary lunch

Another busy week for Beijing Rotary and Rotaract. We started with our weekly lunch in Kempinski Hotel on Tuesday 29 September.

Happy to see our friend Andreas back in Beijing and back to the club. More than ten years ago I had sponsored him to become member. Now he will hopefully soon be our member again.
Earlier we had our Social event for Beijing Rotary.

We still have a number of Rotarians and Rotaractors who could not yet return to Beijing.

Rotaract social

On 30 September Treffyn organized a social Rotaract evening in a Chinese restaurant close to 3.3. It was our first “life” get together.

Good choice, good authentic Chinese dishes, simple environment, lots of beer – and vodka thanks to Treffyn. Pretty cheap too.
Restaurant details: “Shijinyuan” in Sanlitun East Second Street, next to the north gate of the Armed Police Beijing Corps Hospital. Name in Chinese: 十锦园.

Thanks to Danny, president of the Rotary Club of Beijing, to join us.
Yeah after that dinner I still had to rush to Morel’s Restaurant as it was the “official drinking evening” for Renaat. Many bottles emptied…

Care for Children

Our weekly lunch

During our Rotary lunch in Kempinski on 15 September we welcomed Care for Children to give a presentation.
Nice turnout, as members were interested in the presentation.

Speakers always get our banner as a token of appreciation.

Care for Children

Some members participated online using ZOOM.
CfC was established as a charity organization in the UK in 1998. Since 1998, it has pioneered family-based care in China, helping transform their child welfare system. Foster care now represents one of the primary methods of care for orphaned and vulnerable children.
Working under the Ministry of Civil Affairs with the Chinese Association of Social Workers, it has trained thousands of family placement workers throughout the country to provide long-term support to children and the families they join, and hundreds of thousands of children’s lives have been transformed.

The speakers delivered a very professional presentation:
Dr. Zhang Qiuling, Research Manager. She is an International child development specialist with Doctor degree on Child Development. More than 20 years of research and training experience in child protection, child development and family care & deeply understanding of child welfare and social service system of China.
Erin Wang, Training Manager. Master of Educational Psychology, University of Sydney. Ten years of experience in curriculum design and field training in child development and family care.

For more details, see: https://www.careforchildren.com/index.html
In short:
What We Do: We partner with governments across Asia to place orphaned and abandoned children into local, loving families.
Where We Work: Care for Children has been working in China for twenty years, Thailand for seven years and Vietnam for two years.

Rotarians meet in Beijing

Informal meetings

After months of restrictions due to the virus, Rotarians meet in Beijing again for informal meetings and simple social events.
Many of our members are locked out of China; especially our Rotaractors have a tough time as many are students or professors/teachers, unable to return.
We did restart with some modest lunches and dinners just to meet each other.

Hilton “BBQ”

Initially on 28 July we had planned an outdoor BBQ in the Hilton (3rd East Ring Road) but due to possible rain the hotel gave us the restaurant on the 2nd floor for our private dinner.
It was also the handover from the 2019-2020 team to the 2020-2021 team.

I managed to bring in some more young people who were able to mingle with the Rotarians.
Good service of the Hilton staff left everybody happy!
We had so many nationalities present, too many to mention…

A farewell dinner

Sadly in Beijing people come and go. One of our past presidents of the Rotary Club of Beijing is leaving us, as he got a new assignment in Europe.
One of our “core members” organized a small dinner at her home, to say farewell to our members leaving us. Our host did a wonderful job, so much delicious food, drinks and we even had a mini KTV session, revealing some hidden talents among our members.
I took part with a Rotaractor to help out for the service, we dressed in our Rotaract uniform!

We all hope we can slowly get back to normal to do our “service to the community”! Most of our projects are for children in need.

Beijing Rotaract Clubs new team

Election time

Every year it has to be done, see here the Beijing Rotaract Clubs new team, after the May elections:
Rotaract Beijing West:

President: Gaukhar T. (Kazahkstan)
Vice President: Kien D. (Guyana)
Secretary: Sabrina L.
Treasurer Georgiana B.

Rotaract Beijing:

President: Marc T. (USA)
Vice President: Trefyn G (USA)
Treasurer: Frederice K. (Belgium)
Project Director: Deliah N. (Uganda)

See the election meeting on 22 May of the Beijing Rotaract Club in Ruhe Cafe, followed by celebration in QMex.

New team in place

On 26 June the Rotaract Club of Beijing had the last meeting of the Rotary year, followed by a celebration in QMex. The new teams start on 1 July.

 

Some of the weekly meetings

See the meeting in Ruhe Cafe on 24 April 2017.

 

 

Beijing Rotary lunch 27 June

Sergeant-at-Arms

Our Tuesday Beijing Rotary lunch 27 June in Kempinski again required me to jump in as Sergeant-at-Arms. Happy to welcome our Rotaractors from the Rotaract Club of Beijing: the outgoing president Peter D. (Romania) and incoming president Marc T. (USA). And Matt S. from Rotaract Club of Honolulu (Hawaii).

(Pics by Celine)

Speaker

Speaker for our Rotary lunch 27 June was Dr. Joern Joergensen, topic: “A Life without Glasses”.

Dr. Joergensen is the founder, CEO & Medical Director of EuroEyes, has performed over 100,000 surgeries. Dr. Joergensen is recognized as one of the Best Eye Doctor in Germany by <FOCUS>. EuroEyes is the largest clinic group in Germany for Refractive surgery. Myopia has become an epidemic in east Asian countries, especially in China. As the aging of the population grows, more and more people also get presbyopia. EuroEyes started to get many Chinese patients in Germany. There is a big gap in high-end medical services in China. The numbers of myopia and presbyopia patients are growing rapidly. Dr. Joergensen explained the pathological mechanism of myopia and presbyopia. Besides guaranteed high quality of surgery and services, EuroEyes also give back to the community by performing free eye surgeries to the people in need.