No foreigners allowed in Pingyao

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

China Daily promotes tourism?

See this recent article, all nice but no foreigners allowed in Pingyao…
“Tourism gets back on track” 16 October 2020
Discover Shanxi by China Daily
http://sx.people.com.cn/n2/2020/1016/c189152-34354367.html

“Pingyao, in central Shanxi and one of the top tourist destinations in the province, is known for its ancient city, old streets and time-honored firms established by the famed Shanxi merchants centuries ago. The county of Pingyao welcomed more than 300,000 visits during the eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays on Oct 1-8. The figure ranks it first among all tourist attractions in Shanxi province. Shanxi province received more than 52 million visits during the period and netted a tourism revenue of 31.64 billion yuan ($4.69 billion), according to the Shanxi Culture and Tourism Department. The department’s officials said the figures－almost the same as last year－show that local tourism has recovered from the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak that started earlier this year.”

Pingyao is a key tourist destination in Shanxi

I had the pleasure to visit it in June 2018 before the virus. A very interesting place.

I still need to go through the many pictures I took and post some.

Pingyao is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a traditional Han Chinese city, founded in the 14th century. Pingyao county was recently listed among the country’s top 100 counties in terms of tourism strength in 2020.

See: http://shanxi.chinadaily.com.cn/pingyao/

The reality

My wife arrived in Pingyao this month to visit, together with Chinese friends.
They went to several hotels and all said, sorry. no foreigners allowed in Pingyao. Call to police did not solve anything.
They finally managed to enter with their car the old city. Found a small basic hotel where my wife said, sorry I lost my Chinese ID (she is Chinese with a Belgian passport). So she managed to stay the night (it was a very poor “hotel”).

I tried to contact the Shanxi and Pingyao government to complain. As always, either the contact details are wrong or no answer:

Shanxi Pingyao – Contact Us – Updated:2013-07-05 10:12 – Pingyao Tourism Bureau
Email: sxpyly@yahoo.com.cn (does not work!)
and
Shanxi government contact: zgsxwz@shanxi.gov.cn
Email sent, no answer.

Welcome to China! OK, foreigners not always welcome.

Rotary Club of Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Unauthorized websites

We want to point out there is no updated website of the Rotary Club of Beijing. The only official site http://rotaryclub-beijing.org/ is currently dormant.
Any other website claiming to be of the club is unauthorized and do ignore the content.

On my website I bring some news of recent activities of our Club but it is not as such the official website of the club. Any content here is my personal view.

Visit of our Special Representative

The present group of Rotary, Rotaract and Interact clubs in China is seen by Rotary International as a special “District”. As such we do not have a governor as itis the case for districts, instead we have a “Special Representative” (SR), Rtn. Richard. Officially our club is in District 0052 with Club Number: 60724.
Our weekly meeting of 20 October at the Kempinski Hotel we had a special guest: Richard , our SR.

He came over to discuss progress of Rotary in China and to learn about our club.
Before the lunch he met with members of the board.
As for now in China we have 28 Rotary clubs, 10 Rotaract clubs and 12 Interact clubs.
I joined the club on 11 January 2005.

What is Rotary?

See here a few slides about what is Rotary. For more, see the international website.

 

 

World Bank talk in Rotary Club of Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotary lunch 25 August 2020

During our lunch in the Kempinski Hotel Liangmaqiao we had a World Bank talk in Rotary Club of Beijing by our new member Ben, to speak about a fascinating subject:
“China’ s infrastructure development – lessons and practices”

China has had a spectacular success in developing a massive infrastructure that has generated rapid economic growth and helped to lift 800 million out of poverty.
Many developing and emerging countries seek to understand how China was able to finance and develop such large-scale infrastructure.

Ben Reja, World Bank Practice Manager for Transport Infrastructure based in Beijing, discussed China’s model of infrastructure financing and how the World Bank has been supporting various local governments to build up their infrastructure in an environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable way.

New members

Not only the World Bank talk that day, we were also happy to see two new members, Christin and Ben, being officially inducted.
The Rotary Club of Beijing is sparing no efforts to attract new members to serve the community.

2020 is a tough year

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

My Jenny Lou is closed

2020 is a tough year for many businesses in Beijing, too many to mention. Some are simply the victim of the wave of destruction in Beijing, in particular in my gongti area (Worker’s Stadium), for others it is the impact of COVID-19.

My favorite Jenny Lou decided to close, it was in front of Buona Bocca and Mala Bocca (Xindong Lu, the small street of Jiamei Dental), see how it looked like in February 2020. Reason: too few foreign customers… as many cannot be back.

Another victim is Cafe de la Poste, was in operation for some 15 years.

Gongti destruction

As posted earlier, most within the gongti area is to be razed.

See here an update with the buildings on the north side being demolished, the coffeeshop also marked “to destroy”, Superlife biting the dust and our beloved Legend Beer and Laburnum Thai Restaurant being smashed to pieces. The whole gongti area is becoming very flat…

See the date of the picture.
It seems some buildings will be spared (IQIYI and the “hotel”) but who knows… Also the fate of (formerly called) Gongti Yibai (Gongti 100 see how it was originally https://www.frommers.com/destinations/beijing/active-pursuits) remains unclear but Club One Third is still making a mess of the traffic in the street till early morning hours.

 

Beijing Rotary and Rotaract

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotary lunch

Another busy week for Beijing Rotary and Rotaract. We started with our weekly lunch in Kempinski Hotel on Tuesday 29 September.

Happy to see our friend Andreas back in Beijing and back to the club. More than ten years ago I had sponsored him to become member. Now he will hopefully soon be our member again.
Earlier we had our Social event for Beijing Rotary.

We still have a number of Rotarians and Rotaractors who could not yet return to Beijing.

Rotaract social

On 30 September Treffyn organized a social Rotaract evening in a Chinese restaurant close to 3.3. It was our first “life” get together.

Good choice, good authentic Chinese dishes, simple environment, lots of beer – and vodka thanks to Treffyn. Pretty cheap too.
Restaurant details: “Shijinyuan” in Sanlitun East Second Street, next to the north gate of the Armed Police Beijing Corps Hospital. Name in Chinese: 十锦园.

Thanks to Danny, president of the Rotary Club of Beijing, to join us.
Yeah after that dinner I still had to rush to Morel’s Restaurant as it was the “official drinking evening” for Renaat. Many bottles emptied…