During my stay with my daughter in Carmel, Indiana (near Indianapolis) I finally managed to visit a local club. During my previous stay I couldn’t as all clubs in the region were “on holiday” with Thanksgiving.
Finding the clubs is easy with the Rotary app on the mobile.

My daughter took a day off so she could take me and join the lunch on 1 April.

Always interesting to see how other clubs work and how they can be different.
A pretty large crowd, men and women. Relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Efficient handling of visiting Rotarians with attendance slip that also functions as a badge.
They read the 4-way test, as we sometimes do. Different: a (Christian) prayer and allegiance pledge to America, those would be a definite no-go in our clubs (non religious and we are many nationalities and religions). No “Happy Money” collection. Contrary to our club, I guess few visitors (only me!).
I made a short introduction of our Beijing Club and we exchanged banners.

The presentation was for me very interesting: the speaker gave an overview of the operation of the “Bankers Life Fieldhouse”, the Indianapolis indoor stadium for basketball that houses the Indiana Pacers. Just a few days earlier I visited the impressive stadium for the match Indiana Pacers – Chicago Bulls. As I worked before for the Olympics I could appreciate how much the sports industry is advanced there, certainly compared to China that is decades behind. The whole setup, security, facilities, food and beverage, merchandise outlets, the fan clubs, the atmosphere: whaw. Great stuff. See the figures of what it means in terms of contribution to the economy…

I hope next time to re-visit the club and maybe visit others in the region.

We tried another location for our weekly lunch, this time on 15 March we were in the Westin Hotel.

The speaker was Nevijo Mance, Vice President of Research and Development Projects at BMW Beijing. He presented BMW’s automated driving technology.

When developing automated driving technology, efficiency and low emission remain as long term challenges. Different countries have different emissions standards. In order to fulfill the raising CO2-emissions and fleet targets, significant shares of BEV/PHEV-vehicles are necessary. BMW i3 takes advantage of the benefits of a pure BEV architecture. Laserlight is the latest innovation of BMW Group. It enables excellent visibility of 600 meters, great energy efficiency and is harmless to human eyes. Digitalization is driven by politics, new players and evolving customer requirements. BMW’s latest innovations include Gesture Control and Touch Command. Current advanced driver assistant systems play an important role in protecting people. The new 7 Series already provides functions very close to highly automated driving.

However, true automated driving still means a big step because of a responsibility switch from man to machine, from no system/driver only to driverless vehicles. The Highly Automated Driving Architecture has both on-board and off-board intelligence to enable localization, perception and trajectories planning. Environment models are still very restricted when compared to human perception. Price levels of current high performance lidar sensors are a concern, but cost efficient alternatives are already on the horizon and expected to become mass market compatible. Remaining challenges comprise industrialization as well as technological, social and legal aspects.

(thanks to Celine for the pics and the overview)

It was also Cornelia’s Farewell, we will miss her, she is one of our “old timers” in the club. She will leave Beijing at the end of March. She will look for a new club in Berlin. She thanked the members of Rotary Beijing for a great time and expressed her hopes that she would return in the future.
That is a constant concern in our club: people leaving, because their assignment is at the end or they retire… or they run away because of the pollution…

On Tuesday evening 8 March a special evening instead of our usual lunch: a Middle East dinner at 1001 Nights Restaurant in Solana. Many thanks to Rtn Eli for organizing this nice dinner.

We had two speakers!

The Ambassador of Cyprus gave us an introduction of Cyprus
Mr. Agis Loizou is currently the Ambassador of the Republic of Cyprus to the People’s Republic of China, with parallel accreditations to Japan, Republic of Korea, DPRK, Mongolia, Laos and Cambodia.
Cyprus is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean, and a member state of the European Union. An island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, it is located south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel, north of Egypt and east of Greece. Being at the crossroads of civilizations, Cyprus was over the centuries exposed to many foreign influences which have shaped its rich and unique culture. Ambassador Loizou explained Cyprus’s history, religion, wine and cuisine.

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Here is a selection of pictures (Gilbert & Celine)

The second speaker was Ms. Lucia Helms, introducing “Chunmiao Little Flower”.
See: Chunmiao Little Flower
Ms. Lucia Helms is a volunteer at Chunmiao Little Flower, a non-profit organization registered in both US and China that seeks to save abandoned children with complex medical needs. Through skilled, intensive nursing care, education, and family-oriented foster care, Little Flower seeks to improve the livelihood of children of all ages with a wide range of health challenges – from cleft lip & palate to heart defects. Administrative overheads are covered by specific donations, 100% of all other donations go directly toward the costs for childcare.
An auction of six bottles of liquor donated by Ambassador Loizou and 1001 Nights, a donation by 1001 Nights and the Happy Money raised over RMB 6000 which was handed over to Chunmiao Little Flower.
As for the belly dancing we were looking for, something went wrong and the lady skipped us.

On 23 February we had Andrey Kirillov as our speaker, on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
This time we had a dinner in the Four Seasons Hotel, instead of the usual lunch in Kempinski Hotel. I was once more acting Sergeant-at-Arms…

(Thanks Celine for the pics!)

He explained the SCO, its history and structure. It is a Eurasian political, economic and military organization which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These countries, except for Uzbekistan had been members of the Shanghai Five, established in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, members renamed the organization. In July 2015, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as full members, and they are expected to join by 2016. The SCO is primarily centered on its member nations’ security-related concerns, often describing the main threats it confronts as being terrorism, separatism and extremism. A Framework Agreement to enhance economic cooperation was signed by SCO member states in 2003. In 2009, China announced plans to provide a US$10 billion loan to SCO member states to shore up the struggling economies of its members amid the global financial crisis.
I invited Andrey to join my “Old China Hands Lunch” as he is a China veteran.

On Tuesday 19 January we had as speaker Mr. David Kelly. His topic: Going Global 2.0 on Capacity Cooperation.

Mr. David Kelly works at China Policy. With interests encompassing a sweep of issues affecting China’s domestic reforms and its strategic positioning, David leads the governance and law, and geopolitics teams at China Policy. He has a particular interest in the external impact of China’s governance model.
A skilled workshop facilitator and driver of organizational learning on China, David is known for leading tough, China-grounded debate in corporate boardrooms. A sought-after international media commentator, he frequently appears on the BBC, Voice of America, Australian ABC, Al Jazeera and in leading print media.
In his speech David focused on China’s new globalization drive and how it differed from the country’s earlier going out initiatives.