On Saturday 19 October 2013 we organized a Rotary Rotaract BBQ event and horse riding as a Fellowship to mingle Rotary and Rotaract members and people interested in our Club.
Location: the mansion of the CEO of Jiamei Dental, Mr. Liu Jia, on the old airport road. The event was sponsored by Mr. Liu plus some modest contribution (many sausages!) from our family. I was myself the BBQ “master”, something I have been doing a lot in China (and in Hong Kong!), I guess something I learned in Brazil.

We managed to set up a car pool so most of Rotaract members made it to the mansion.
I think who came had a rather good time, quite a number of people did some horse riding. The weather was nice despite my initial worries.
See here one comment:
“Mr. Barbecue, you were great! And so was the entire event! Nice food, drinks, people and horses and sunshine. What a day! What fantastic people! And the horses…! Those who did not turn up just missed the best Rotary fellowship event in Beijing.”
Now this is nice to read…
We had 16 Rotaractors, 8 Rotarians (and friends), and 7 Children plus many Chinese friends of Mr. Liu. Thanks to him we raised RMB 1.950 for Rotary and Rotaract. Real pity we had only a total of 4 Rotarians, one being a visiting Rotarian from the USA. Thanks Juan, Åsa, Peter for joining me.
Many thanks to Mr. Liu who also invites all guests for a free dental check and cleaning; for details just contact me.

Yes, no error here!
We had already met the delegation of the Rotary Club in our lunch on 15 October, see earlier post.

This time, H.E. Stefán Skjaldarson, ambassador of Iceland,  and his wife Mrs. Birgit Nyborg invited several of the Beijing Rotary members to his residence for a buffet reception. The occasion was a rather official Rotary meeting of the Iceland Rotary Club. The Club delegates made a couple of Icelandic speeches (now that was worse than a Chinese dialect for me!) and gave their banner, Club hat and some beautiful stone eggs to the ambassador and his wife. I tried to figure out first if they were Iceland dinosaur eggs but that was wrong, what a pity. But the eggs were really great pieces of art … I love stones…

Many thanks to the ambassador, all the Rotarian friends from Iceland for their hospitality in … Beijing!

On 15 October our Rotary Club of Beijing had its weekly lunch, this time we were honored with the presence of three ambassadors: H.E. Manuel Valencia (Spain), H.E. Stefán Skjaldarson (Iceland – a Rotarian) and H.E. Sèdozan jean-Claude Apithy (Benin, member of our club). That guaranteed a pretty full house for once.

Also, a group of Rotarians from Iceland visited our club, exchanging banners and introducing their clubs. As Sergeant-at-Arms I had a hard time reading their names but one of the Iceland ladies graciously volunteered to help me pronounce at least the first names.

The speaker of today was the Spanish ambassador who gave a rather optimistic picture on how Spain is economically improving and could regain its glamor. We certainly need some optimism in Europe…