Beijing is tough. Flu and colds are constant epidemics. Once you catch something (easy as everybody around you has “it”), you can’t get rid of it unless you go on a strict diet of antibiotics, Chinese pills & liquids, barrels of water, rest etc. Don’t listen to your European doctors. Just run to the pharmacy where you can get all antibiotics over the counter. At least, that’s the easy part in Beijing.
The horribly polluted air must be the cause of this evil. Seems few people escape. And if you want to know, pollution today was at 130 to 150 around here. Compare that to the WHO max. of 20. Well, could be worse, could be 500. Easy to be satisfied in Beijing.

I was more than right.
On 7 March I was interviewing nearly 30 candidates to be English-speaking volunteers for “120”, the medical emergency service here. OK, once again all because of 2008, seems those Olympics will never take place, new tasks always pop up. Must be of course because it was just Lei Feng Day two days earlier and I am the “New Lei Feng”. If you have no clue what that means, Google it and relax, many Chinese don’t know either. Some poor soldier in a corner of China doing great things for free. Funny is, there was always some photographer around the corner to take cool pics (Peter Danford denies any involvement).

So, well documented, all his good deeds. “Hold it right there, a bit more to the left”. Click! Some bad mouths question why he seemed to have a watch on his wrist, not normal at that time for a poor soldier. Oh well. No Photoshop that time.
To learn from him, a large picture stands in my office and Chinese friends admire my zest.
Back to 120. Valerie and me teaming up, all for the good cause. Valerie was very convincing: her wife (oh well, she was playing the husband, just to confuse the candidates I guess) and the kids were all in a traffic accident, etc. etc. Blood all over. Ambulance urgently required.

We must have made some impression as we were promptly featured on the website of 120 (pics taken from their website). The whole family. All LeiFeng-ing. But we must admit, the 120 staff are real nice and friendly. We even got a reward. And I start to be too well know – out of under 30 candidates 2 actually had met me. Scary.
After hours of interviews my voice started cracking up (or down, rather).
Back in the office. Some “old friends” (foreigners!) came to say hi. In reality they came to bug me for 2 hours on some Olympic stuff. Yeah, try this with a doctor:
“Hello Dr. Sam! Long time no see! How’s the family? Just came to chat, by chance passing by. By the way, I have this pain right here, what could it be? Have a look. What medicine should I take?”. Right. I guess Dr. Sam would have said, sorry, make an appointment. Being nice does not work.
So, voice down the drain even more.
Then, damn, I had promised to attend the Amcham/EUCCC cocktail at the Centro Bar.
Some red wines later with friends and charming Chinese girls, my voice went 100% dead.
Tried to call 120, the operator couldn’t hear me.
So, I shut up for the next days (to the delight of many). And looked up at Lei Feng.

The Guanghua School of Management (affiliated to Beida – Beijing University) invited Gilbert to give a speech during their Forum on 5 January. The topic of his speech: “How Chinese companies can use sponsorship of the 2008 Olympics to make their brands known in the international market”. Basically it all bois down to say Chinese companies can only do it properly through their websites. There are some legal limitations for what they can do outside of China. Unfortunately most of those companies have lousy websites… few have English sections and many fail to give a clear picture of what they really do and what their involvement is in the 2008 Olympics.
In an earlier seminar with the same topic, a not-so-very-bright journalist from “The Economic Observer” (a Chinese newspaper in Beijing) totally missed the point (what’s new?) and basically wrote Gilbert was so negative with his criticism right in front of the sponsors. Oh well, too bad for her, she called Gilbert some days ago for another interview and he was “too busy”.
At least somebody listened after the first seminar – BOCOG’a website was promptly changed and improved one week later (Sohu people were in the audience…).

Long Yongtu – Gilbert speaking – the Q&A session

The Guanghua Forum was a real big event, Mr. Long Yongtu and other VIPs were all in the spotlight. Gilbert felt frustrated (again): he was the only English speaker and the whole forum was conducted in Chinese. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should improve my Chinese. But it was interesting to meet and discuss with some of the other participants (Volkswagen, Cisco, Panasonic, etc.).
The day was closed with a banquet with performances and a lucky draw. The festivity was sponsored by…. Wuliangye, one of the famous white spirits of China (actually quite good, I prefer it over Moutai). OK, I guess no any MBA School in the USA could be sponsored for such an event by a hard liquor company. This is China. We even have THREE beer sponsors for the Olympics. I was hoping that Davidoff Cigars would be one too but, no luck.
I had the honor of popping up the bottle of champagne (well, something vaguely similar) together with Mr. Ren Zhi-qiang (president of Beijing Hua Yuan Group, one of the major real estate companies here).

I can do this! Oops, where did the cork go? Making bubbles

Out of sympathy they let me him win one (more) bottle of Wuliangye. To show my appreciation (the Wuliangye guy was sitting at my table), I kept busy taking care of one of the bottles. (I did have a sound sleep later). The liquor was that strong I even saw a foreign girl floating in the air! I took even a picture!

I was invited as a speaker, my CV and details were posted on their website. Only one problem. I didn’t know about it and worse, I had to talk in Beijing at the same time. It turned out that six months ago, between two beers at a reception, I had agreed to talk “in Guangzhou” but the organizers never contacted me. Panic in Guangzhou when I said I couldn’t go, lots of calls and finally the schedule was changed so I could talk on 28 November in the morning, rush out of the seminar, catch the next plane and head to the Bencham seminar in Beijing.
The topic: “The future of sports in China & post-games use of facilities – the legacy of the 2008 Olympics, a case study”.

The organizers got the text in advance to facilitate translation. What happened next, not clear. Maybe the interpreter had a bad night, the journalists did not bother to check the printed text of my paper, the journalists don’t understand English or had hearing problems. Probably all of the above.
In the next days Chinese websites were busy reporting on my speech, I would have said all kinds of very unfriendly things about Beijing and also gave a figure of 5,000 sports facilities existing in the capital – my paper mentions 40 major existing facilities excluding those belonging to the many schools, universities and other organizations.
On the way to the airport I was told some journalists wanted to interview me… Who knows what nonsense would have come out of that.
Nobody called to reprimand me of my hostile words. Anyway, I had the official text ready, graciously provided by the organizers.
Just imagine you work for a company and your boss gets the angry feedback – that would be a bad day to remember. One of my luxuries. No boss.