Terrorists and smog did not stop us

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

On 24 December Beijing woke up to an alert from the U.S. embassy that there was a risk for terrorist activity especially in the Sanlitun area.
Police and special security teams were present en masse, side streets were blocked, no more parked cars and part of the bar area in Sanlitun was blocked. Many people were scared and it all upset our plans for the evening, to celebrate Christmas Evev with our friends.
This time no place in our home office for our usual mega party as it is now a warehouse of antique furniture and stuff. So we opted to head to “Beer Mania” in Sanlitun Nan Lu, managed by our Belgian friend Thierry who offered an attractive menu.
Some of our friends did cancel but we were still a large group to enjoy the good beer and food.

It was also a very bad period of pollution. See some of the readings, one is taken on my balcony with the LaserEgg. Many jokes went around, like Santa was not coming to Beijing because he could not find it…
The day was full of surprises. Out of the blue my Vietnamese friend called me, we know each other since 1990 and worked closely together when I was doing the Vietnamese telecommunications market. He is now a deputy minister and was with a delegation in Beijing. We finally found a way to meet in his busy schedule, in our home after the Christmas Evev party. It was wonderful to see such a good old friend after so many years. Seems the Vietnamese located me as we had somehow lost the right contact numbers.

Exploring Chusai Xinjiang Restaurant in Gongti

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

At first I thought the brand new restaurant in Gongti Nan Lu, close to South Gate of Worker’s Stadium and the Spanish Center Instituto Cervantes was a new edition of the Beijing Duck restaurant that stood there. A bit difficult to find out the real name of the place: Chusai.
Well, very surprised to find a large and modern Xinjiang food restaurant, nice decoration and actually great food for very reasonable prices, and friendly manager.

 

We loved it all, ate too much of the BBQ lamb and the potato dish. We still had to ask for doggy bag…
Looks also suitable to come with a large group as the restaurant is fairly large. I understand they are working on a hotpot restaurant next door.

Old China Hands lunch 5 February

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

As usual some people told me the turnout would be minimal as it was just before Chinese New Year. And as usual, they were wrong (I never dare myself to make a prediction…).
So, we ended up 27 in total, a nice mix as usual.

 

On another very sad note, I must inform that one of our members is no more.
Our Dutch friend Willem van Kemenade passed away on 8 February while on holiday in The Netherlands. He was well known in the local community and we regularly had a chat. RIP my friend.
Do note that due to overseas trips the dates for the upcoming lunches have been changed to Wednesday 9 March and Friday 8 April.

Launch of the Belgians in Beijing Club

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

We can say in some way that the dinner at In & Out (Yunnan Restaurant, see my earlier comment) on 14 January was the start of the BBC, our new Beijing Belgian Club. There were some preparatory meetings in the previous weeks to brainstorm on how to set it up.
See: In Out Yunnan Food

 

There were some initiatives in the past, more than ten years ago, with Michel Lens organizing the “Blue Lotus”. But at the time, response was rather lukewarm – my own experience is that the Belgian community in Beijing is hard to mobilize, while in Shanghai that is not an issue at all.
But now we have some enthusiastic volunteers and we hope we can look ahead to a nice gathering of Belgians here in the capital! A first idea for the website was planned and the domain name reserved.
Since then the name has been changed to “Belgians in Beijing” (BiB). A logo will soon be chosen. See the new website: http://www.belgiansinbeijing.com/
The next “official” event will be on 11 March in the Belgian Embassy.

Rotary Beijing’s New Year Reception

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

The Charity New Year Reception was held on Tuesday, January 12th in PE Daniel’s showroom at Jiancai Jingmao Dasha (Beijing Building Material Trade Tower). Twenty-five guests participated in the event including two Rotaractors. Three bottles of fine wines donated by La Cava De Laoma were auctioned off as were three paintings donated by PP. Mike Ma. The proceeds from the auction will go towards the funding of club projects. The total collected in the evening (tickets, auctions, donations) was close to RMB 50,000.

 

See here a selection of the pictures, by Celine and Gilbert.