Our Rotary Bazaar: a success! On 9 and 10 November the Rotary Club of Beijing held its annual Bazaar, in the ballroom of the Kempinski Hotel.

It was announced earlier.

I had my own table to sell my book, sharing it with MCF (Migrant Children Foundation). I also acted a bit as the photographer. But I was mainly involved in helping our Rotaract volunteers with the photo booth. This time I came up with the idea to have Mickey and Mini running around to take pictures with kids (and adults with a young heart). I sponsored the costumes and some energetic volunteers made a real blast with the crowds. As usual the Bazaar was visited by many families with kids.

This year, all tables were sold and the quality of the vendors was great as I received a lot of positive feedback from both vendors and visitors. We also had several performances, a lucky draw and a silent auction.

But better than many words, see the pictures. We were all pretty tired but happy.
Thanks for all those who came to visit – and some of my friends spent lots of money – and too bad for those who missed it.

On Tuesday 29 October, right after our weekly Rotary lunch at the Kempinski, our Rotaractor Emmanuel organized an interesting and unique talk.
A member of European parliament, Mr. Sajjad H Karim (MEP Conservatives in The European Parliament & LLB Hons North West England), came to meet members of Rotaract and Rotary to discuss his experiences and views on British-Chinese relations and his work in the European parliament.

Mr. Karim worked as a lawyer before being elected to represent the North-West of England in the European Parliament in 2004.  He is committed to developing the EU’s relationship with developing countries in Asia such as India and China and has been closely involved with the EU-India Free Trade Agreement which seeks to advance trade between the European Union and India.
Mr. Karim was the first British Muslim to be elected to the European Parliament and in 2005 established the European Parliament Friends of Pakistan Group, as well as being a member of Friends of India and Friends of Bangladesh Groups. Through his interaction with these groups, Mr. Karim demonstrates a global outlook for the European Union and seeks to build relationships with developing countries across the world.
Mr. Karim’s world travels also brought him to extreme danger when he was caught in the devastating 2008 Mumbai attacks by Pakistani extremists.  He also made headline news in the British press in 2012 after helping to return six-year old Atiya Wilkinson to her mother, after she had been abducted to Pakistan by her father three years earlier’.
Mr. Karim is part of a larger delegation of the EU Parliament, visiting Beijing. I was myself in a meeting earlier the same day to address part of the delegation on issues related to Public Procurement and recent political and economic developments in China.

On Monday 21 October Rotaract had a special guest speaker in The Local:
Laura Schuurmans gave a talk on the unresolved Kashmir dispute where three nuclear giants have laid their claims: India, Pakistan, and China. After more than six decades, the Kashmir conflict has yet to be resolved, and which has become, in the words of former US President Bill Clinton, ‘the most dangerous place on earth’.
Laura Schuurmans recently returned from Kashmir and the de facto border that divides India and Pakistan, after conducting on-site research for three months.  She has been actively working on the Kashmir dispute since 2007, with the Kashmir Solidarity Forum in Jakarta publishing her work ‘Kashmir: Paradise on Earth or a Nuclear Flashpoint’ in an exclusive full color edition in 2010. In September, 2012 she presented her research at a seminar held in the European Parliament in Brussels.
As China has started playing a more pro-active role on the world stage, Laura has been a post-graduate research fellow at Peking University where she has concentrated on China’s relations with its neighboring countries, and has contributed to books on its relations with India and Pakistan, as well as completing extensive research on Chinese-Iranian relations. In 2012 she completed her research on nuclear geopolitics and Iran’s nuclear activities, and she contributed a book chapter on “The Future of the Sino-Iran Entente”. In 2013 she wrote her final book chapter on nuclear nonproliferation in the region in which she presented three different case studies of Iran, North Korea and nuclear proliferation of India and Pakistan. Much of her published work can be found on her website: www.lauraschuurmans.com.

The talk was well attended and we were all impressed by Laura’s deep knowledge.

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!