Foreign Expert, Take II . . .

About two months back, I was asked by China Daily's Foreign Experts Office if I would attend a seminar scheduled for the week before I was due to fly home to Aotearoa/New Zealand. I happily agreed as such things are usually interesting in all sorts of ways that often have little to do with the assigned topic, and asked for more information. The usual things that concern a journalist - the who, what, when, where and why of what was planned, so I could, in turn, plan accordingly.

The only information initially available was the date. I've lived in China long enough to find this unsurprising - information was so closely controlled here for so long that there remains a tendency to treat everything as a secret to be revealed only when absolutely necessary. As an aside, that can be painful for a writer here, but you learn to live and adapt to what is. A week before the date, I had still managed to obtain little more information than that, but had been asked to flesh out my biographical details for the organizers.

Two days before the event, I was told I would be expected to stay overnight the evening before, despite it being held in Beijing and apparently not far from where I live. By now, this had become an adventure/mystery that highly amused me and I was planning to treat the seminar as an improvisational theater activity. The morning before, I was told I would be provided with a car and driver to take me to the Beijing Foreign Affairs Office and given the number of a contact person. Nobody could tell me where I was staying, which I was mainly curious about to know if there was a gym or pool there.

That evening, my driver delivered me to the Foreign Affairs Office, which turned out to have a hotel attached (with gym and pool) and I learned there was some justification to parts of the secrecy after all. The next day was to be spent with a consultation of foreign experts and ministry officials in the morning, following by transportation to the Great Hall of the People for a symposium and banquet dinner with Premier Li Keqiang.

China consciously tries to learn from the best practices of other countries and, I learned, holds such an event annually to consult with foreign experts both resident in the country or with ties to it. This year's symposium marked the first time English-language media had been invited to attend, I was told by the senior China Daily official also invited.

I was impressed by the surroundings and the food, as one would expect in the building that is the political hub of China, and even more impressed with the attention paid to speakers and questions asked of them by China's number two player. I was equally impressed by the company I found myself in - five Nobel Laureates in Economics, a former ambassador to China from Korea, a former minister of education for the Netherlands, and the women I sat with at breakfast. Asked what they do, one replied, "I build commercial aircraft" and the other is a bio-geneticist researching cancers.

I couldn't help but feel like the Maori gal who'd snuck in the back door and bluffed her way to the head table, but I made sure to smile sweetly and behave reasonably well in case they might want to invite me back some day . . .

Foreign Expert, Take I . . .

Having been an expat for so long, in so many countries, I find it interesting to compare how foreign professionals are treated in each, and how we are referred to.

In Korea, where I have worked the longest, I was considered a "Registered Alien" and had an ID card to prove my status. And, when I think about it, that's how we were often treated. I mainly got along well with my colleagues and employers and was treated well, but there was always a sense that Koreans were more important and so were their opinions.

Here in China, I have become a "Foreign Expert," and the standard of treatment gels with the more respectful term. President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have identified the need to learn from the best practices of the developed world and the government has very active programs to recruit talented people from abroad.

We even have complete departments set up to make life easier for us, including the State Administration of Foreign Experts, which often arranges special events for international staff.

One such last week was the 2015 Spring Festival Celebration for Foreign Experts, when we were invited to Bihai Hillside Resort beside Lake Jinhai for the day. We arrived to find experts in traditional arts and crafts set up to demonstrate and teach such skills as tying traditional knots, painting masks and paper cutting, then were treated to performances and an extensive banquet.

It was an enjoyable day in a beautiful setting to which I plan to return when the weather is warmer and the lake has thawed.

Arriving at the resort

Looking out at Jinhai Lake

an exquisitely painted mask

a master of Chinese knot work who teaches at the
Central Institute of Arts and Crafts in Beijing

 

 

 

 

 

 

a student teaches me to knot a bracelet

finished work (not mine)

a master of egg painting

finished products

learning young

paper cutting

a friend blows the animal of her birth year from sugar

another friend and colleague is on the receiving end of an interview

Feminists and feminism ...

Colleen McCullough died

The author of Tim, The Thorn Birds, Masters of Rome  and a host of other books. Her writing enriched my life.

Her obituary in The Australian makes me angry.

The lead paragraph, which does mention she was a best-selling author, then discusses her looks, weight and man-pulling ability. And I thought of my female friends and how they might be reduced to such idiocy - MEK, a gorgeous redhead who also scaled mountains, oh, and advised powerful men; Stephanie, a pretty blond who knew people in power; Susanne . . .  you know, why do we have to justify our specialness?

I'm kinda pissed, but from pissed comes ideas

Ladies, lady friends, let's celebrate who we are and what we have done. (Stephanie started this but I'm taking it a step further.)

We're not going to be around for the obits but I'm asking - what are you most proud of? What do YOU want to be remembered for? What do YOU think is important in your life thus far (I expect much more)?

Let's make a book to inspire

Smelling the roses . . .

Sometimes it's the unplanned days that give the most pleasure . . .

Life has been busy of late. Work has entailed changes that, as changes do, need time to learn and master. I'm back at the gym and making that a priority on my free time schedule while also fitting in errands and shopping that take time, particularly when you use a cycle and are so fussy you have to go all over the city to get your weekly groceries (not a chore by any means - I love exploring the city but it does take time).

Today's schedule was to take a friend to a framer another friend and I found last week, and have watercolors I bought back from Paris mounted and framed. I then planned to spend all afternoon at the gym and pool before dinner with other friends.

I'm glad I was flexible.

We had coffee and lunch after visiting the framer then went for a walk, which took us to Beihai Park near Beijing's Forbidden City. I had been there before and told my friend about it, including a dancing group I'd seen there, and she asked if I would mind if we went in for a short while.

I'm so glad we did and that I didn't hold myself to my gym commitment.

Instead, we walked, laughed, watched locals ice-skating, playing in ice-bumper cars, boats and all manner of contraptions, watched the dancers and climbed the hill to see the view from the park's White Pagoda.

Watched the dancers,

nd enjoyed an unplanned, unmapped, unfettered day of pure fun.

There was also a gorgeous cat that allowed me to stroke its ears and a busker who looked (a little) like Jackie Chan on the subway (which I NEVER take but am glad I did today).

Next comes dinner . . .

perhaps this is what Jaycee Chan is reduced to after his drug bust???

'tis the season . . .

Unexpectedly, the recent Thanksgiving holiday and this month's Christmas are very much front and center here in China. Thanksgiving seemed to slip by the average Chinese almost unnoticed but not so the large and vibrant expat community. For at least a month before, English-language publications and websites were talking up the US holiday, dispensing tips on where to go to get provisions for a celebration at home and which hotels and restaurants were serving Thanksgiving dinners.  Markets started selling Butterball turkeys and pie bases (cans of cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie filling are always available at the expat markets) and Sanlitun - an area that contains many embassies and high-end international brand stores - lit up the trees along its streets.

Nobody who has a facebook account could fail to notice the holiday, whether one's friends were taking the date as an opportunity to be thankful for all they have or simply posting turkey and pilgrim jokes that ranged from humorous through obscene (and often both). Social media may well be as instrumental in globalizing celebrations as the Web was in cementing English as the world's lingua franca and as television has been in disseminating the "American dream."

In what has become a China Daily foreign expert tradition of its own, a colleague organized a trip to an amazing restaurant/eco-resort that sits in the shadow of the Great Wall for Thanksgiving dinner. Because of work schedules, we attended the "reprise" on the Saturday evening rather than the Thursday event. I've attended the last two years, with an out-of-town US guest last year -  the organizer-in-chief has been for the past four or five years. Despite losing our way (the site moved from the restaurant to the eco-resort), rain, motion-sickness (not I) and horrific smog, the evening was fabulous. As were the fellow guests (including a table of Australians I made a point of harassing, because that's what we Antipodeans do), the food, the wines, liqueurs and live jazz.

As was our host, Jim Spear, who is fully deserving of his own post.

Reader, as Bronte might have writ, the post becomes a little darker here but I promise a spark of light throughout.

In one of life's bad jokes, Thanksgiving this year fell around the time of the anniversary of my mother's suicide (sorry family, but I'm incapable of calling it anything other than what it is). It's a sad anniversary I share with a treasured friend whose baby girl died that day before we even met. I was surprised I wasn't as upset this year as on previous years, but perhaps we are getting to the point where we have grown accustomed to the loss and the pain and the date itself is irrelevant. The space they occupied will always be empty, no matter what day it is.

Having breezed through some other country's holiday with no ill effects, I find myself coming up on Christmas, which has always been a sensitive time, Mother-memories wise. And the melancholy snuck up on me unexpectedly. Which is okay, because I felt a little guilty about not being overly sad on the designated day.

But it is tempered more than it has been in the past. I've been less tolerant than usual and gotten mad at an acquaintance over something I would normally laugh off, but I'm coping, with a little help from my friends.

Two of those friends took me to a Christmas bazaar last weekend, which not only restored my faith in human nature but gave me plenty of ideas of how I may be able to contribute to my new home, outside of work and friendships. Many of the stalls belonged to nongovernmental organizations and i was surprised and heartened by the range.

One organization teaches marketable skills to women lured to the country's capital with the promise of legitimate jobs that are anything but, another houses and educates visually impaired orphans. We shared our lunch table with a woman whose friend started a group that teaches skills such as baking to people with mental challenges.

Since leaving Korea, one of the things that has been missing from my life is the opportunity to volunteer - to help others who weren't born with the accident of place, race, health or potential that I was.

I now have an overabundance of choices and am researching the options.

I'm very tempted by crazy bake - helping the mentally ill cook will remind me of my family (typed with love). Or, for 300 kwai a month, about the cost of a good bottle of wine here, I could sponsor a visually impaired child. The latter offers the opportunity to visit the home and farm but I'm not quite sure how viable that would be for a non-Chinese speaker.

There are other options to peruse also, and a little time to go until Christmas.

But I'm thinking that my Christmas gift to myself (if we ignore the necklace I bought at the bazaar) will be to give something back.

and a profile . . .

sans the professor . . .

Part II . . .

Alex . . .