Old China Hands 4 June lunch

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Full house for an anniversary

For our Old China Hands 4 June lunch we again had some surprises, celebrating our 8th anniversary with a group picture and an unplanned musical performance.
Actually the lunches started in April 2013 but we were too busy in the previous lunches and wanted the celebration to be the main focus. Again with team work we got a banner that we used for the group picture. Some new faces but happy to see again our Aussie friend Geoff back and out of quarantine.

As Morel’s Restaurant had some staff issues I had to be the cashier at the door and forced to have part of my lunch while raking in the money.
And mobilizing the gang for the group picture demanded some calls to order, made easy as I am the Sergeant-at-Arms in Rotary. We were 35 exactly with a special table for the Flemish gang.

Impromptu performance

Our member Peter has some remarkable talents in shooting music videos. He surprised us by setting up a short trio performance. He has his own band, music studio and video company (more than 100 songs where he did composition and Chinese lyrics). He certainly has a very interesting professional background too…
See the vimeo clip, need VPN in China.

Our lunches are never boring!

Another author among our members

Our (new) member Caroline surprised me with her book: “Les trente glorieuses chinoises de 1980 à nos jours – Caroline Puel”. See here: https://www.france24.com/en/20110120-caroline-puel-journalist-author-30-years-that-changed-china

I promptly bought the book and I started reading it – looks very interesting. So few people know about the real history of modern China.

And yeah back back again

Honestly, a bit too much of Morel’s Restaurant?

The same evening back, to have dinner with friends. I had the spaghetti, the best one in town, really. And see what else came on the table.

Old China Hands 7 May lunch

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Always something special

Our Old China Hands 7 May lunch was again in an unusual week: though a “working day” it was for many still in the middle of the May 1 holiday week. Others were just back at work and super busy but we were exactly 29 total.
We surprised Tibor with a Happy Birthday mini-firework…
The previous day Luc and me had our second vaccine shot; a Dutch friend who had it too was too unwell to attend the lunch. Everybody has different reaction to the vaccine…

Saying bye to Kent

I had prepared a special gift for our friend Kent (musician, chef, painter) who is leaving Beijing soon to be reunited with his wife in USA.

As always a happy crowd in the fully packed Morel’s Restaurant.
Next lunch planned for Friday 4 June.

Discrimination in International School Education

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotary Club of Beijing meets

On 11 May 2021 Lucas Roberts gave us a talk on “Perceptions of Discrimination in International School Education and Rotary International’s Drive for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”.
Location: Morel’s Restaurant and Café.
I had to do magic as the restaurant was overbooked and we had 21 attendants for our 18 seats. We managed…

Lucas aka Luke was also officially inducted as our new member of the Club.
Members and guests enjoyed the food, drinks and dessert!

Luke’s talk

Luke is currently the Head of Primary at Tsinghua University High School International (Chaoyang). Since coming to China to work as a Humanities teacher with a liberal arts major background in 2009, Luke has served as Vice-Principal and Principal in four international and bilingual schools and amidst all those positions, has also acquired a master’s degree in educational administration. Luke also serves on international school accreditation /inspection committees around Asia. Having witnessed the hiring practices first-hand, Luke wanted to share the research findings from his doctor’s dissertation, still in progress, on discrimination in international schools. Additionally, he wanted to highlight Rotary International’s drive on DEI and how this drive amplified the phenomenon of discrimination.

Luke started the talk by sharing the origin of his dissertation and the current lack of research on gender and racism in international education. There has been a growing awareness of racism and diversity within international education in recent years as part of the response to Black Lives Matter.  For his dissertation, Luke investigated the experiences of racially and ethnically diverse international educators who experience discrimination (e.g., racism, native-speakerism) in recruiting, hiring, and promotion opportunities, thus limiting their professional path in international education.

Luke was careful not to take positions in his research but to show the phenomena of discrimination, so as not to compromise the findings of his research. He did, however, share his own experience of fighting for his recruiting for qualifications over skin color in his work. Lastly, Luke showed how his research dovetailed with Rotary International’s statement on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which showed the value RI places on building community across cultures and ideas.

(As reported by Piper)

Rotary Club of Beijing in April

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotary lunch 6 April

Rotary Club of Beijing in April had a busy month, started with the board meeting before the lunch, in a private room of Kempinski Hotel on 6 April 2021.

Lunch was in Via Roma, the Italian restaurant of Kempinski. PE Didier inducted our new member Vivian.

A new venue: Encuentro

The dinner on 13 April 2021 was held in the new South American restaurant Encuentro, located opposite Worker’s Stadium North gate.

Happens that our guest Iris from Panama is a professional food expert and has been advising the restaurant. She also tried an impressive and colorful cocktail, or was it a fruit cup…

Two new members were inducted by PE Didier, Hans and Chris.

A Spanish evening in The Roots

On 27 April 2021 the Rotary Club of Beijing had a Spanish-themed evening party, attended by visiting Rotarians, guests and Rotaractors. Full house at The Roots Restaurant that did a good job with the food, drinks and service.

PE Didier presided the dinner and brought along two guitarists (both from … Xinjiang, not Spain) who entertained us during the evening.

See here a short video (VPN needed in China):
Rotary Spanish evening in Beijing The Roots on 27 April 2021, https://youtu.be/0YBakPzOmQQ

Rotary Club of Beijing is active

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Picking up speed again, except Rotaract

As life in Beijing is basically back to normal, our Rotary Club of Beijing is active thanks to the efforts of PE Didier.
The club is also trying to attract new blood and I am happy to see we have more interest from people from Latin America, among others.
Rotaract is still struggling as many of its members can’t yet return to Beijing, but we try our best under the conditions.

We look back at times like when we had a well-attended hotpot with the Rotaractors on 18 December 2019, in Ritan Dong Lu.

Last year we kept in touch with the Rotaract Club of Beijing West by ZOOM. They still organize this year online events. The Sanlitun club has restarted meetings, like this one in SOHO Sanlitun.

On 22 December 2020 we had our Rotary dinner in Morel’s Restaurant and our Rotaractors Kien and Trefyn also joined.

Rotary lunch 2 March

Our lunch of 2 March 2021 in Kempinski hotel was presided by PE Didier, our President Elect. It was his first event as Club President filling in for Rtn Danny, our 2020-2021 President, who is relocating to Nanjing.
No speaker but Didier gave some feedback to the members present, as well as new potential members, after yesterday’s Club Board meeting.
The project HOPE, introduced by Rtn Helen was approved. As a result the active projects of our Club are HOPE and hypospadias. The Bethel project is still waiting for better times. A project to teach English in Hebei schools is being considered where members of Rotary and Rotaract could act as volunteers.
HOPE is an initiative to help children with mental disabilities to improve their mental and physical condition through special riding lessons. The specially trained horses and the qualified therapists use the horses for the children to open up. The contact with the animals have a proven therapeutic effect.

Didier also appealed for members to come forward and help in taking up roles in the different committees of the Club. Several positions need to be filled such as treasurer and membership chair. New committees are in the pipeline such as events committee (includes the speaker program). On the Rotary International website we can find the job description of most common positions and committees.

More details about hypospadias, see this earlier post with the details: https://www.beijing1980.com/2017/04/13/hypospadias-surgeries-need-support/

Rotary dinner 9 March

Tuesday 9 March at 7 pm we met in Morel’s Restaurant and we had an interesting speaker Tilman Rieger. He is a Shanghai Rotary Club member and also introduced Tilman Tillmann to our Club.  He is the founder and CEO of 8C Consulting, Executive Coaching and related.

He talked about Conflict Management in Relationships. “Know yourself, understand your counterpart, communicate more effectively!”