In 1979, the 5^th National People’s Congress of People Republic of China made a resolution that March 12^th would be taken as Chinese Tree-Planting Day, requiring the whole country to carry out tree-planting activities on this day to protect the environment and to counter the deforestation across the country. As March 12^th is still winter in the northern part of China many regions have moved this day to later in the year, which is the case for Beijing.

Our client, CYDF, kindly invited us to participate in their tree-planting activity about 200km outside of Beijing last Saturday. It was a unique experience as we got to spend some ‘private’ time with our client and their families. You will see on the pictures that we did not have to do all the tree-planting by ourselves but had some professional help.

After two hours of tree-planting we had lunch and then drove to and climbed up Jiming Mountain (1140 above sea level) in Xiahuayuan, Hebei Province. Jiming Mountain is a national ethnic cultural site which features beautifully the coexistence of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Climbing up the mountain while listening to tasteful music we’d pass are various temples and shrines. And the view from the mountain top would have been spectacular had it not been cloudy that day. If you feel like take a look at the tree-planting.

In the picture gallery you will also find a few shots from my visit to Beijing’s 798 Art District. 798 Art District is located in the northeast part of Beijing. What used to be state-owned factories (including Factory 798) has gradually developed (since 2002) into a very cool, liberal art district including galleries, art centers, artists’ studios, design companies, restaurants, and bars. Getting there by bus was an adventure, but I am very glad I took it J

A quick remark as time has been flying and four weeks are coming to an end: This will be the last blog from this trip!

The China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF), founded in 1989, is a non-profit and non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to promoting the development of Chinese youth in education, science and technology, culture, sports, health, and environmental protection. Project Hope, CYDF’s signature project, provides support for financially challenged rural pupils including children of migrant workers. Some impressive achievements from Project Hope:

• Aided more than 4.9 students with primary, secondary and even colleague education
• Built more than 18.000 Hope Primary Schools
• Trained almost 80.000 teachers at rural primary schools
• Built 22 Hope Hospitals and 507 Hope Clinics

Now to what we are doing: A while ago CYDF has received a huge donation from the Deng Xiaoping family and has established an endowment fund and an award – the Xiaoping Award. The vision of the Xiaoping Award is changing the future by eliminating social problems through feasible technological innovations. The award should inspire young people (under 25 year) in China and abroad to become social innovators by changing the world with science and technology.

Our project is to develop a comprehensive plan for the Xiaoping Award to ‘go global’ – it is the first time that a Chinese-based award such as this one goes global. Here are a few example of what we have been working on:

• Recommendations on a global roll-out strategy and a global name for the award
• Development of award definition, categories and criteria
• Development of end-to-end application process
• Recommendations on how to recruit international jurors and the definition of judgment criteria
• Recommendations on how to attract additional donors for special awards
• Recommendations on functionality and usability of Xiaoping Award website
• Recommendations on job profiles for additional staff that CYDF needs
• Development of international communications and fundraising plan
• Recommendations on Xiaoping Award logo

Let me tell you – it is a great project with wonderful CYDF-colleagues, but it is also quite a bit of work!

CYDF is a great organization with dedicated and committed employees who want to make a difference in people’s – especially in children’s – lives! However, unlike small NGOs that have the agility, flexibility and velocity of start-up companies CYDF is a GIANT! CYDF has more than 70 full-time employees across 15+ different departments, it is managed strictly hierarchical and its decision-making processes are very comprehensive…

It is fair to say that it was an interesting evening…

The show venue was a restaurant, Baguobuyi Restaurant. We were told to be there at 6:30 pm because the show were going to start at exactly 6:50 pm and were only going to last for 7-10 minutes! (I am not kidding).

Ok, we arrive at the restaurant on time and expect a stage or at least something resembling a stage. No stage to be seen which leaves us a bit surprised but not too worried (yet). We order our food and drinks, get our cameras ready and wait eagerly for the show to start. Nothing happens!

We try to communicate with our waiters who seem utterly surprised by our question regarding the ‘Face Changing Show’. After a while they come back telling us that the artist(s) are on their way. Half an hour later the artists are still on their way; another half an hour later the artists’ taxi is stuck in Beijing traffic. I am sure you get the point.

To make a long story short: Shortly before 9 pm – we are the only guests in the restaurant by that time – the music changes, the staff is all excited and one person in a beautiful yellow dress including a mask starts dancing between the tables. We see a lot of arms waiving and head twisting – and, I admit – some very colorful masks as well.

After exactly 4:03 minutes the show is over….

The Little Swan Migrant Primary School was founded in 2010 as non-profit school and provides education to 571 children from migrant workers aged between 6 and 14. While most of the children go home to their parents at night the school also provides boarding school services to a few children as they don’t have any family. As of 2013, the school offers a charity program to enroll 93 special hardship students such as orphans, children from single-parent families or physically challenged families. While the school and the teachers are doing a great job in caring for the children the condition are very tough….take a look at the pictures.

But before you go to the picture page let me give you some information about the situation of migrant workers in China: China is looking at tens of millions of migrant workers as the urbanization target is at 70% for the year 2035 starting from a baseline of 26% in 1990. However, China’s Hukou system makes moving from agricultural jobs in rural areas to non-agricultural jobs in urban areas very difficult. The Hukou system is household registration system required by law. A household registration record officially identifies a person as a resident of a specific area and includes identifying information such as name, parents, spouse, and date of birth. The pain point is that these registrations are very hard to move! This means that tens of millions of migrant workers remain registered in their home towns even if they move to the city to work. Without a ‘city’ registration though, they do not have access to state-subsidized services such as health care, education and pension payments. Currently, there are more than 478,000 migrant children in Beijing about 70% attend public schools such as the Little Swan Migrant School.

It was amazing to me how quickly we ‘bonded’ with the kids by painting a container and just kicking a football around in the schoolyard. The language barrier didn’t matter at all!

Even though I am well aware that a couple of hours of our time and a newly painted container does not sustainably alleviate the children’s situation, it might have made an impact and provided some joy for the children. It certainly had an impact on us.

Spending time at and walking on the Great Wall was simply amazing!

Several dynasties of Chinese emperors have contributed to the 8851km long Wall starting with the Qin dynasty 200 BC. Even though The Wall – reaching from the border with North Korea in the east to Lop Nur in the far western province of Xinjiang – was supposed to protect China from enemies this was hardly possible as it was never one continuous structure. The Wall had many gaps where invaders got through. Today, some parts of The Wall are well preserved others have been destroyed.

The Mutianyu part of The Wall, where we went to, is a renovated stretch of The Wall about 90km away from Beijing. And unlike the Forbidden City and Summer Palace it was not very crowded! We went up to The Wall by chairlift and then climbed up and down the really big steps for about two hours. It is a beautiful landscape around Mutianyu and – if you ignore your own heavy breathing after climbing up and down – simply a very peaceful atmosphere. Maybe you see some of it on the pictures. I could have easily spent the entire day up there, but we had to get back to the city.

This was the last part of last weekend’s sightseeing activities. We will see what the next weekend brings.

After the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square I went to the Summer Palace the next day. The Summer Palace was the ‘summer playground’ of the emperor and his family. Needless to say that it was a huge playground consisting of a mix of beautiful temples, gardens, pavilions and corridors at respectively around Kunming Lake. While I am certain it can be a very peaceful place, it was the opposite on the weekend.

And you would not believe it, but from the top of Longevity Hill – the center piece of Summer Palace that you reach by climbing up 365 stairs – you can actually see the ‘end’ of the city of Beijing. And it takes only about 60 minutes by train from the city center to get there…

The Lama Temple, second stop of the day, is less spectacular. Or maybe it just depends on the order in which you visit the sites. To be fair, the Lama Temple consists of five halls and three archways and is one of the most magnificent Tibetan Buddhist temples outside Tibet itself. It is still active these days, however, tourists clearly outnumber the monks.

Take a look at the pictures of day if you feel like.

However, before I start raving about the beauty of the Forbidden City and the magnitude of the Tiananmen Square I would like you to imagine the following. Think about a street fair or a beer festival on a Friday or Saturday night! This is how it felt most of the time on Tiananmen Square and in the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, many Chinese tourists seem to make good use of the three-day weekend as well.

Tiananmen Square is simply huge! It is in the center of Beijing and is the largest public square in the world (500m x 880m)…and maybe one of the best surveilled as well. Even though it is supposed to be a public square it feels very much like a government-controlled space including airport level security when going onto the square (with metal detectors and x-ray machines – I am not kidding!), heavy video surveillance and police presence.

The set-up and architecture of for example the Memorial Hall of Chairman Mao, also known as mausoleum of Mao Zedong, as well as the adjacent National Museum of China is not neccessarily beautiful but very impressive. Located to its North, separating it from the Forbidden City, is the Gate of Heavenly Peace from which Chairman Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

If Tiananmen Square is huge there is no adjective to describe the dimension of the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is the former imperial palace which was the home to twenty-four Chinese emperors (Ming and Qing dynasty) over 491 years between 1420 and 1911. The entire ‘city’ is 961m x 753m and includes more than 9.000 rooms. During its ‘glorious’ times only eunuchs, women and the emperor himself were allowed in the city.

Today, only about one third of the ‘city’ is open to the public. And unfortunately due to the number of visitors on that particular weekend most halls, galleries and museums inside the Forbidden City were closed… But the halls, gardens, sculptures and other precious treasure that we were able to visit was already more than enough – just take a look at the picture gallery.

Even though China does not celebrate Easter we are lucky as we are going to have a three day weekend. Monday is ‘Tomb Sweeping Day’ in China which is similar to the Corpus Christi celebrations. People usually visit their families, and they commemorate their ancestors and loved ones who passed away.

Thus, I am getting ready for a long weekend and I am looking forward to some serious sightseeing.

Happy Easter and happy holidays from Beijing!

During the personal preparations as well as the official pre-work sessions of the project we have discussed cultural differences between China and our home countries (I am here with people from eight different countries) and how they impact our behavior. In addition to not paying cultural differences into consideration there is also stereotyping and sometimes even plain prejudice that people fall for…

Here some observations:

In Germany a ‘proper’ handshake is considered polite; for some people it even means that the person they have just shaken hands with is trustworthy. In China a ‘proper’ handshake is considered rude. So far, I have only experienced very light handshakes.

Friends, colleagues (one of whom is married to a Chinese and regularly visiting their family) and the media sometimes portray the ‘Chinese’ – a generalization that I hate and usually try to avoid – as rude and impolite. After five days I strongly object. Chinese people whom I have met so far have been pleasant and helpful including our clients, hotel staff, taxi driver, service personnel as well as people on the street who frequently smile.

However not saying ‘no’ or not indicating that something might be ‘wrong’ is indeed a challenge! We are currently revising the scope of work for our project and would highly appreciate some clear feedback and expectations from our clients. This is rather tough and requires some skillful negotiation as keeping the face is the driving principle for our Chinese counterparts. For example: During today’s meeting we were reviewing a document that had been provided by our client. Thus, we assumed that we were all looking at the final version. Not until we were halfway through the document did our client raise its concerns saying that they might not have the final version of the document in front of them….

Last but not least a funny one:

Crossing a street regardless of whether there are traffic lights and/or a crosswalk is an adventure every time. Chinese drivers DO NOT CARE about anything but moving forward as fast as possible. A solid advice: Never try to cross a street by yourself. And if you join a group use your fellow pedestrians as ‘human shield’

I should mention that there are many eight-lane roads in the city that people frequently need to cross….like the one right in front of my hotel.

However, after all the pre-work and preparations during the past weeks all of us were eagerly waiting to meet our clients and get started. My teammates and I are lucky with our clients at the China Youth Developement Foundation. They seem to be really nice people, but due to the language barrier it will most likely take a few days to get to know each other better. I’ll be talking some more about our project as soon as we have finalized the scope of work.

Today was the first heavy smog day that I experienced in Beijing to which people in the office euphemistically referred to as haze. Well, maybe this is a way to cope with the inevitable situation if you live and work in the city. It is supposed to be raining tomorrow – let’s see if we then get a bit clear sky.