Care for Children

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Our weekly lunch

During our Rotary lunch in Kempinski on 15 September we welcomed Care for Children to give a presentation.
Nice turnout, as members were interested in the presentation.

Speakers always get our banner as a token of appreciation.

Care for Children

Some members participated online using ZOOM.
CfC was established as a charity organization in the UK in 1998. Since 1998, it has pioneered family-based care in China, helping transform their child welfare system. Foster care now represents one of the primary methods of care for orphaned and vulnerable children.
Working under the Ministry of Civil Affairs with the Chinese Association of Social Workers, it has trained thousands of family placement workers throughout the country to provide long-term support to children and the families they join, and hundreds of thousands of children’s lives have been transformed.

The speakers delivered a very professional presentation:
Dr. Zhang Qiuling, Research Manager. She is an International child development specialist with Doctor degree on Child Development. More than 20 years of research and training experience in child protection, child development and family care & deeply understanding of child welfare and social service system of China.
Erin Wang, Training Manager. Master of Educational Psychology, University of Sydney. Ten years of experience in curriculum design and field training in child development and family care.

For more details, see: https://www.careforchildren.com/index.html
In short:
What We Do: We partner with governments across Asia to place orphaned and abandoned children into local, loving families.
Where We Work: Care for Children has been working in China for twenty years, Thailand for seven years and Vietnam for two years.

Beijing Rotary in Morel

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Dinner instead of lunch

This time, Beijing Rotary in Morel Restaurant as our club is doing some dinner evenings instead of the usual lunches in Kempinski.
We had a nice crowd, many nationalities with some guests who were interested to listen to our speaker of the evening, Michael.

Michael, our speaker

Michael is a game addict and enthusiast programmer since age 11-12.

After a career in finance & investment industry, in 2003  back to China to join his beloved game industry as Chief Operating Officer of Netease (the second biggest Chinese game company); since then been making games, publishing games and investing into many game companies. Left Netease to start his own company, now being restructured.
Speaker Michael Tong gave us an overview of the video game industry with added spicy controversies and special surprising aspects for people not familiar with the industry, e.g. its size compared to movie and music industry, how people can acquire knowledge from games, and how it is affecting pop culture. For many of the “older” people, a new world – except if they have kids…

Morel’s Restaurant and Café

As always, Chef Renaat did not disappoint. We had a good deal for this great menu, most went for the menu. a very few chose from A La Carte.
Morel’s Dinner menu:

Starter: Fishers Wife Salad
Flemish Vegetable Soup
Main course

Medallion of Beef tenderloin with mushroom sauce
Or
Red Snapper Provençale style

Dessert: Pancakes with Ice cream & Fresh Fruit Salad
WHITE wine: Chile, Luis Felipe Edwards Chardonnay 2015
RED Wine: French, Château de France, Côtes de Bordeaux 2013
Local beer and soft drinks.

 

Old China Hands Lunch 4 September

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Back in numbers!

We had our Old China Hands Lunch 4 September with a very nice attendance: 30 plus one child! That is the best we had this year. Of course we miss the thirty something of our members still stuck abroad.

Our friend Kent brought a big tiramisu as a desert for all. It was wonderful. He also got the praise from Chef Renaat!

Next lunch

Planned for Friday 2 October, right in the middle of the October 1 Golden Week. It’s a gamble as always: no excuse you need to work. Bored at home, as many (like me) still avoid travel and the annoyance of being targeted as “dangerous foreign virus carriers”.
Anyway, Morel’s Restaurant will be open, so let’s go for it!

Digibesity

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

The new buzzwords

Call it Digibesity, Mal de Coucou or OCUD, I often wonder if it is not worse than COVID-19.
Like for the dreaded virus we face now, this mobile virus has a few names:

Digibesitas (Dutch) or “Digibesity” for our English readers.
Cellfish: Those who continue to talk on their cell phone, oblivious to the effect on others around them.
Nomophobia: refers to the fear of being without your mobile phone or without a cellular or WIFI signal.
OCUD (Obsessive cell phone use disorder) describes a person who continually talks on their cell phone or checks updates on mobile apps in public, while driving, meeting friends or eating in a restaurant. Or going to a classical concert. Mal de Coucou is a new buzzword, says China Daily: “Describes a phenomenon in which a person has an active social life but very few close friends”.

The plague of the new era

I already published a few posts with some hilarious (not sure this is the right word!) pics and cartoons:

Digibesity books and articles: https://www.beijing1980.com/2017/04/06/digibesity-books-articles/

Digibesity can harm, and kill you: https://www.beijing1980.com/2017/04/04/digibesity-can-harm-kill/

Digibesity the new social plague: https://www.beijing1980.com/2017/04/04/digibesity-the-new-social-plague/

Do you suffer from OCUD or Mal de Coucou? https://www.beijing1980.com/2015/12/03/do-you-suffer-from-ocud-or-mal-de-coucou/

Call me old-fashioned

You can, but I don’t care. However, do note I am also hours on my mobile, plus desktop where I am active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and a few others. I stopped Instagram, not that interesting. Livestreaming for foreigners in China is totally forbidden. Can’t use the app Douyin and always failed to activate TikTok. Well, maybe not missing that much.

But I hate to sit with “friends” at a restaurant when they have more interest in their mobiles (and making stupid selfies), and people walking, biking and even driving glued to their mobile screens. They totally ignore the real world around them and are only alive in their artificial world.
I love to walk around and see what’s around me. And enjoying my food. BTW be aware it is bad for your health to eat AND look at your screens at the same time.

I miss the pre-mobile era

Looking at an old VHS of Madonna public performances (she is one of the greatest performers), one interesting aspect: no mobiles yet. People chatting with each other, not glued to their mobile, not taking pictures. The public during the shows actually is listening to the music and paying attention to the performers.
I miss that time.

When I was young we had no mobiles, only the fixed line at home that we had to share with the whole house. Privacy was often a problem so I learned to whisper in the phone to the annoyance of my parents. We survived very well, managed to meet and date, and have fun.

Love the pics

Here some more funny pics.

 

And a tell-all video:

More to come!

New Beijing Workers Stadium

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Confusion

Few people seem to be aware we will have a new Beijing Workers Stadium, expected to be delivered by December 2022, to be ready for the July 2023 Opening Ceremonies for the 2023 Asian Cup Games. Many were confused why the old stadium was being demolished starting on 5 August 2020.

See how the Stadium looked like and the razing that took a few days only. They used water cannons to reduce the dust.
Well, blame the usual lack of communication by the Beijing Government. Some even say the secrecy is due to the fact the area is “owned by the military”.
The new stadium will be at the same location but with improvements to meet the needs of world-class professional football field.
However it is a fact there is a total lack of clarity how the area will be transformed as it is the location of many restaurants, discos, KTV and other outlets.
Also unclear is what will happen with the Gongti Indoor Stadium: they just started building a big fence around it.
I first reported on it here.

As far as I know most if not all of the venues will be closed at some point. That would also include Legend Beer, among others. It is said “The Workers Stadium will also become an open urban public space for mass sports and cultural activities and a new vitality center of the city.”

A long history and end of life

I have so many stories about that stadium. It was also my training ground to prepare for my marathons, having the complete stadium with its running track only for myself.

The main structure of the Workers Stadium had reached its service life.
It was designed by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design and Research and was completed and put into use in 1959. It was the largest comprehensive stadium in the eastern part of Beijing. It had a standard football field, a 400-meter rubber track among others. The main building was 64,000 sqm. it was the venue for the first National Games and other large-scale sports events.

According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources, the main building of the Stadium was a concrete structure with a design life of 50 years. Since the 1990s, three structural reinforcements and one facility renovation have been carried out. Among them, in order to host the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Workers’ Stadium has undergone comprehensive structural reinforcement in accordance with the 7-degree seismic fortification standard (the Beijing area is an 8-degree seismic fortification area) – the service life is 12 years. At present, the main structure of the Beijing Workers Stadium had reached the end of its service life, and there are potential safety hazards and obsolete facilities and equipment.

By 2018, the National Construction Engineering Quality Supervision and Inspection Center conducted a house inspection and appraisal of the construction. The conclusion was the overall structural safety and seismic resistance of the building seriously did not meet the relevant national standards. It also did not meet the requirements of the Asian Cup and other major international professional football matches. Therefore, it was urgent to upgrade.

The new stadium

After the transformation of the new Beijing Workers Stadium, the elliptical shape of the main building will remain basically unchanged, and it will meet the needs of the internal circular passage while maintaining the proportion of the facade.
At the same time, the reconstruction will keep the original characteristic elements of the construction body basically unchanged, and protect and restore the important characteristic elements, such as flagpoles, gate posts, sculptures, and architectural decoration components.

See a few pictures showing the future stadium and the surrounding area. While some may be “artist rendering” most of the existing structures in the area seem to be gone except for the two main buildings of former “Gongti Yibai”.

You can also see the large new underground facilities with the connection to the new subway lines (should be Line 3 and Line 17, all currently under construction).
See also a view on the new facility being built by CSCEC on the East side of the Stadium: “China Philharmonic Orchestra Concert Hall and Rehearsal Facilities”.
Nobody talks about this…
And a lot is going on also in the South East corner of the Gongti area. No idea what is coming there.

Sources, among other:
http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/08/20/760571.html
https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20200807A0GC8Z00?ADTAG=amp

I keep you posted!