About Gilbert
Gilbert is from Ghent, Belgium where he was born looooooong time ago.
In his adventurous life he was first shipped from Genova (Italy) to Santos (Brazil). He arrived in São Paulo in late 1973 with his first wife Danielle (the wonderful mother of his daughter Marianne – she sadly passed away in 2005), a huge wooden crate of 410 Kg, 20 words of Portuguese and no job.
Later Nigeria followed, a brief (fortunately!) but interesting experience. In his hotel in Port Harcourt he met a Chinese tugboat mechanic who became a good friend. In Hong Kong in December 1980 he found his friend back who then, through a typical Chinese network, introduced him to other Chinese friends in Beijing when he arrived some days later. It all ended in his second marriage, Chinese style: through introduction – no bar pick-up, anyway there were no bars in Beijing that time. Actually there was nothing.
As an innocent foreigner he was the last to understand his Chinese friends were setting him up for a date. They told him after he was married. They sure had a good laugh, especially referring to that fateful first dinner date with the bride-to-be: the main dish was buffalo penis in hot sauce. He should have know something was suspicious …
Some decades later, he still is still stuck in Beijing, the city he now considers his home and gave him another daughter, Valerie.
See here the Beijing family (Beijing December 2005) and in Washington DC with Marianne and grandson (November 2005). More recent pics you can find in this blog.
More about Gilbert, including contact details: see the brief in PDF, click to download.
Or… See here the chapter of a Chinese book, published in Beijing:
范克高夫-中国的洋劳模
Van Kerckhove: the model China worker
From the book (pages 227 to 242):
“International Talent, the bridge of Communicating the World”
“Guojihuarencai shijiegoutong deqiaoliang” (February 2007) – By: Chen Weihua
Published by China Media University Press (Zhongguo Chuanmei Daxue Banshi)
Translation by Valerie Van Kerckhove
Click here to download the pdf.
I am also listed in the special book that features 60 experts (60 years PRC…) in China’s recent history.
The book is called “60 Foreign Experts in China”, published in 2009 by the Foreign Languages Press and compiled by International Talent monthly. Forword by Zhang Jianguo, Deputy General Director of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.
Listed also are Israel Epstein, Sidney Shapiro, David Dollar, William Lindesay, Norman Foster, Edwin Maher and Henricus (Hein for the insiders) Verbruggen.
Download the pdf (I made a scan) of the book with my “story” in English and Chinese.
2009_60experts.pdf
For those who read Chinese, see also the article published in “International Talent” in October 2008, as a download:
081001talent.pdf