Surviving is hard but oh so much fun (sometimes)
On 7 October, still the “Golden Holiday Week” of 1 October, so no official Rotary lunch. Instead I was asked to help for a “fellowship”, in Paulaner Restaurant (Kempinski).
Small crowd but also with visiting Rotarians from Kansa City, Rotary Club of OLATHE, Kansas City, KS, USA (Club #1625, District 5710).
The Olathe Rotary Club was chartered on August 17, 1937.
Our Sergeant-at-Arms James (yeah, he is an ex-NBA, so….) took care of the banner exchange with Carol.
This year I attended the Rotary China Convention 2014 in Shanghai along with several Rotarians and Rotaractors from Beijing, 20 and 21 September.
RI President Gary was the keynote speaker so was Dr. Cheng Che Min, a 91 year old preeminent professor who was the first Chinese recipient of the Rotary scholarships in 1948. Attended by over 150 Rotarians from over 20 districts and clubs the Convention was very successful event.
I was honored to be another “keynote speaker” in the morning session, to talk about my book Toxic Capitalism, the issues with pollution and CSR.
Some of the other speakers: Graham Earnshaw (well-known author), Richard Hsu (Human City), John Liu (The Art of Healing the Earth), Selma Steenhuisen, Johanna (Rotaract Beijing), Ruby and Piper (Rotary Beijing, and many others, some pictured.
On Saturday evening we had a musical evening in the garden of the hotel, by Nanmo (Nanya Model High School Orchestra), Tijana Kos (Serbia) and Janinia Simion (member of the new Chengdu Rotary Club), and a great BBQ.
We stayed in the Radisson BLU, Hotel Pudong Century Park. See the views of the room and outside. The area around the hotel is pretty lively with bars and restaurants and more.
The hotel also has a bar with a Philippine band, see the pics.
The pictures are just a personal selection (all reduced size for web viewing).
And if you think you see me talking into my mobile, no, I was singing along with “Yueliang Daibiao Wode Xin”, one of my KTV favorites!
The Conference was an important event as we had the exceptional honor the have the Rotary International President, Gary Huang and his wife Corinna, plus a host of other Rotarians from all over China and the world.
Well, Rotary China is growing. We have now three chartered clubs: Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. Plus a series of Rotaract and Interact clubs. Other Rotary Fellowship clubs are starting up and looking forward one day to be chartered.
The event received a great coverage in Global Times, see:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/884897.shtml
A happy meeting to LIGHT UP ROTARY!
The first four China International Chongyang Festivals were successfully organized and held in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012; due to budget restrictions and the call for saving money, 2013 was not held. I am in the Organizing Committee since the first one.
This year it was hosted as usual by the Managing Committee of China Aging International Development Foundation, where I also have a position. This event was held in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Beijing on Oct. 12, 2014. The previous ones were all in the Great Hall of the People. Diaoyutai is certainly an improvement: better service, better food, less hassle to enter and certainly less austere.
Many ambassadors (Senegal, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, …), embassy delegates, foreign organizations and others attended. I invited several foreign “senior” citizens.
Ms. Peng Pei Yun was the highest invited guest from the government; she is Vice Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the Chairwoman of the All-China Women’s Federation, and President of the Red Cross Society of China.
I gave my speech in Chinese and English, as representative of the foreign seniors.
As always the performances by the senior citizens’ Art Troup were impressive and charmed the audience. Some of the dancers (see the pic with Ms. Peng) were over 90 years old.
All my guests were pretty happy with the evening.
(And I was relieved nothing went wrong and my Chinese was declared ”ok”!)
Due to government regulations, Rotary Clubs in China, such as our club in Beijing, are not allowed to have Mainland passport holders as members. As a result, recruiting and keeping members is pretty difficult as potential members must be “of good standing” in the community, in other words, be of a certain level. Most expats are here for a short period, usually like five years. Long-term residents are rather few. Worse, recently we have seen an even larger turnover with people leaving because of the difficulty to have a visa/work permit, for the pollution, because of retirment or simply because they do not feel like staying longer.
So, pretty sad to see always good friends leaving. We had a farewell Peking Duck for our always-smiling Swedish lady. We will miss her, as many others.
New members join and finally I can take some rest from my near-permanent role as Sergeant-at-Arms, with James taking over. Now I can enjoy my lunch and put money in the Happy Box as everybody!
James, stick to your job for a while!
A recent headline in the SCMP read:
‘Hong Kong students beat us to it’: Benny Tai declares.
It reminded me of a misunderstanding with a so-called American Chinese lady, on WeChat. While she seemed well educated, her English proficiency wasn’t that good it seems.
In Sanlitun The Village there was an event with male models to promote the opening a new well-known brand. Many people posted pics on WeChat, so did she. I left the comment, well-intended. that others “beat her to the pics”. She was pretty upset about it, did not understand the expression, said she “did not know the others” etc. etc. That was the end of our WeChat connection.
Conclusion was again:
I was left pretty annoyed and disappointed with the miscommunication, even trying my best to explain. In vain.