Family

Sun Bingwen, Zhu De and Liu Ding

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Statues near the river side

In a previous post I mentioned the history of Zhu De and Sun Bingwen. On 21 March 2024 a ceremony was held honoring the legacies of Sun Bingwen, Zhu De and Liu Ding. Two groups of statues are located on the river side at Nanxi City.

One location is with the statues of Zhu De and Sun Bingwen, the other is the statue of Liu Ding.
Sun Bin, as the granddaughter of Sun Bingwen and myself paid respect to the grandfather.
Liu Wenshi and Liu Wenshan, sons of Liu Ding the “military industry leader and united front hero” paid respect to their father.

The museums

We visted the Nanxi Museum and then the old residence of Zhu De in Nanxi.
Some of the pictures in the museum were donated by Sun Bin. Pictures feature Zhu De, Sun Bingwen. Sun Yang and Sun Weishi.

When we left the former residence, three young pioneers greeted Sun Bin, Liu Wenshi and Liu Wenshan.
Near the museum I spotted some interesting mural decorations…

Who is Liu Ding

Liu Ding (1902 – 1986) was a native of Nanxi, an older generation revolutionary activist of the Communist Party of China, a loyal communist fighter, and a famous military industrialist. He was an expert in the machinery industry, the founder and outstanding leader of my country’s military industry, and the first president of North China University. He is known as the dean of China’s military industry. In 1924, he joined the Communist Party of China after being introduced by Sun Bingwen and Zhu De. In 1924, he went to Germany for a work-study program and served as secretary of the Youth League branch in Germany. In 1926, he went to the Soviet Union for further study. Graduated from Moscow Oriental University in 1928. In 1929, he was transferred back to China and served as deputy section chief of the Second Section of the Special Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. He has been engaged in underground intelligence work for a long time and made great contributions in the Xi’an Incident.

In 1952, in order to prepare for the trial production of standardized weapons he established a number of basic research institutes to serve the ordnance industry. They are the earliest technological research institutions established in New China.
His background in Chinese can be found here.
See here a transcript of the information in Chinese with partial translation: LiuDing_bio

A forest with Taxus Chinensis

On 22 March 2024 we crossed the Yabgtze River and went up to a mountain to check on the culture of a special plant called Taxus Chinensis, also called Chinese Yew.
In our delegation some participants are interested in the plant, used to produce medicines for cancer treatment, including Paclitaxel and Taxifolin. It can also be used in many other ways and is protected under Chinese and international law. Currently, the species is suffering the consequences of its economic and scientific exploitation for the production of the aforementioned anticancer drugs.

See more here: Taxus chinensis

We had a lunch with very local food on the mountain top.

Home Christmas party

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Party is back

We decided, a bit at the last moment, to have again our home Christmas Party, on Christmas Eve 24 December.
We went for a “reduced” crowd, in our vocabulary that means around close to 50 (including the kids).
We invited the foreign experts of BRITF and a UWEE representative, plus some more friends.

Yes, the usual turkey, the best you can find in this world, everybody gets a bit crazy about it. And many other dishes, all thanks to the chef Sun (she kicks out everybody from the kitchen when cooking).

Performance

Mark Levine and partner Fu Han kindly gave us a short performance, much appreciated. The other musicians present kept a low profile and only joined the chorus.
Our crowd is always a mix of Chinese friends and expats from around the world. All enjoyed the “organized chaos” as I call it.

Our team is highly efficient. Before midnight all was back to “normal” in our office, as the pictures show. For those who joined us, they must be a bit surprised by the (sudden) change.
Thanks also to all the helping hands to finish the preparations, wash all the dishes and clean it all up. And for filling up again my reserve of red wine.

Thanks also for the beautiful flowers, we first thought it was a cake!
And oh yes. Discover an engineer’s Christmas tree.

Our 2016 Christmas Eve Home Party

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Family United

As Valerie came over for the holidays, the 2016 Christmas Eve Home Party returned to its traditional formula, in our home office, transformed for the occasion by shifting furniture around. We needed to be a bit creative as the space has become a bit tight by moving in all our stuff we re-imported last year.

(My preferred wishes)
Of course the famous turkey was on the menu, the best you can taste in the world, super tender and juicy, not the dry bird stuffed with even drier whatevers you eat in 5-star hotels. All dishes home-made without exception (OK we did not cultivate the smoked salmon, agreed).

The invasion

2016 Christmas Eve Home Party is normally for family, close Chinese friends and a reduced quota of foreigners. Even so we had a variety of American, British, Belgian, Lithuanian and Romanian guests.
The fun part is the total chaos with 50 guests running around, drinking and eating a lot. Pretty relaxed, the least to say. All made possible as many hands were there to help by the last preparations and the cleaning up.
You can also see a glimpse of my Beijing-Belgian-Beer-Bottles collection (well over 100!) in the kitchen. I hope we won’t have an earthquake.

The Great Hall of the People: ode to Zhou Enlai

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

As Sun Bin is deeply involved in the study of China’s period under Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and of course her grandfather Sun Bingwen, we get involved in unusual events. Like this one in the afternoon of 17 February. We thought at first it was a “small event”, till we reached the gates and saw half of Beijing was there queuing up to enter. We were in that huge hall that filled up completely. And me the only foreigner…
Boring at first, it was pretty interesting. For Sun was it rather emotional as it showed the old times, so many memories for her.
On stage, the original seat of Zhou Enlai. And some of the most famous singers in China’s history, some like 90 years old.
Also the “Third Red Generation”, the ones all with a long red scarf.

I was moved by what I consider to be one of the most beautiful pieces of Chinese music. See here the story behind it:

The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend of a tragic love story of a pair of lovers, Liang Shanbo (梁山伯) and Zhu Yingtai (祝英台), whose names form the title of the story. The title is often abbreviated to Liang Zhu (梁祝). The legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai is set in the Eastern Jin dynasty (265-420 CE). The Butterfly Lovers is also known as China’s play of Romeo and Juliet.
In 1950s, Chen Gang (陈钢) composed the internationally famous violin concerto themed with Liangzhu, and in 1954, ex-premier Zhou Enlai introduced the movie named Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, China’s first colored opera-type artistic movie, to the journalists of the world when he attended at the Geneva Conference, and then this movie based on the love story was widely called Chinese Romeo and Juliet. In a short time, this story becomes internationally famous.

The internationally famous violin concerto named Liangzhu or The Butterfly Lovers: see here one of the many versions. Just simple moving….

There are also versions with erhu instead of violin. Great stuff.
See also the old picture of The Great Hall and Tiananmen, when I arrived in Beijing it was still nearly like that: no barriers anywhere. Now, to go there or leave there, what a fuss. All that security. Times have changed and not always for the better.

That special day: 31 December

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Well, it is not really mystery anymore I guess. That day is also my birthday.
A special day for me, to review both the calendar year and my year.
I follow a ritual since many years: I disappear for the day to get away from everything.
But the evening is obvious: the family heads to Morel’s Restaurant for the celebration of my birthday and New Year’s Eve.

This time only the two of us as our daughter Valerie has moved to Brussels, but ended up spending her Christmas and New Year with our friends in Vienna. Stella, the wife of our good friend Peter joined us as Peter was on a concert tour in Europe.
As it happens a number of good friends were there too to wish me a nice Bday.
Thanks to all, and thanks to Susan and Renaat for the great food and service.
Oh well the pics are not that great because we were simply too busy enjoying ourselves!