Reunion Across Sixteen Time Zones

A Force of Nature in the Flat World
Daily I experience the remarkably few degrees of separation between others and me in this very flat world. Back in April in Boston, I met William Valentino, a Vice President with Bayer China, whose daughter worked in Kabul, Afghanistan, from where I had only returned days before. Who hangs out in war zones, let alone works in them? Yet there it was: Bill’s daughter and me in the same land-locked country in South Asia, donning hijab, helping to rebuild a nation in crisis. Bill, quite the force of nature with his vast array of social programs which he oversees in China, agreed to host my doctoral students in Beijing in May, where it just so happened was my next destination. The students were utterly taken with his work and his lifelong commitment to the nation. HIV-AIDS, rural development, education—little escapes Bayer’s touch.

Within hours of the tragic earthquake during our visit, Bayer was providing relief efforts to the victims. My tour guide in China, Lili Li, who had been in touch with Bill at my request before our arrival, asked if he was from Szechuan province. I laughed uproariously as I explained to her that Bill was not Asian, but rather a Caucasian boy from New Jersey. His Mandarin was that good, as was his navigation of Chinese restaurant protocol, where we enjoyed the choicest slices of Peking duck, thanks to his gracious manners. Following that visit, he and I learned that we were both invited to present at the Asian Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility in Singapore in November. A reunion was clearly in the making.

Singapore via Switzerland
Another reunion was also on the horizon, however. In flight between Kuala Lumpur and Bangalore in April 2006, I met Peter Andrist, Vice President of Business Development for GateGourmet, that multinational corporation that provides food for many of the airports throughout the world. (For my first story about Peter, see my blog titled Culture 101 from Tuesday, April 18, 2006.) A Swiss-born citizen whose company was based in Seattle, Washington and who lived in Bangkok, Peter Andrist is responsible for acquisitions for his company throughout Asia. Peter represents to me the epitome of a leader for the 21st century—an individual who can flow with alacrity and confidence in and out of cultures. Peter appreciates the differences between and amongst the many nations in which he finds himself and yet knows how to build bridges with people. Little daunts him and nearly everything brings a twinkle to his eyes. These past two and one-half years we have stayed in touch, although I had not had the opportunity to meet with him whilst he lived in Bangkok and to conduct a formal interview about leadership.

Around May of this year, Peter mentioned to me that he would be moving to Singapore, where coincidentally I would find myself this November, and so it was that we made a plan to meet once again and talk about leadership in a global society. In one of Singapore’s typical torrential deluges, Peter greeted me with his intense blue eyes and wide smile, and we headed to Indochine Waterfront, a marvelous restaurant featuring cuisine from several Asian nations, situated on the Singapore River in the old colonial civic district. Glasses of Sauvignon Blanc in hand, we toasted our reunion and proceeded to talk about foreign policy, Asian cuisine, corporate social responsibility, and the many things we had been doing since the time last we had met at 36,000 feet over Malaysia Airlines’ famous satay.

Over intensely spicy Thai seafood Tom Yam soup and Vit Quay Gion Ton Kin—French duck fillets grilled with herbs and spices—I reminded Peter that his love of food reflected his childhood desire to be a chef. He laughed that I had remembered this very first story he had shared with me, but added to it when I asked how it was that he embraced a world far beyond the tiny town in Switzerland in which he had grown up.

“Do not laugh, Elizabeth, but Switzerland has a Navy. Yes, I know we are land-locked, but it is so, as amusing as that is. I wanted not only to be a chef, but one aboard a large ship,” Peter added.

At age fifteen, he set off for Genoa, Italy where he caught a freighter to Lebanon.
Reflecting at the prospect of my young son, who just turned fourteen, taking off around the world on his own, I queried if this distressed his mother. Peter replied that he did not have the typical teenage vices—no drugs, no criminal intent—and so as the eldest child, he had some amount of leverage to chart his own course.

“This was just before the war in 1971 and so Beirut was simply lovely. Now, of course, it is utterly destroyed. The ship had perhaps only seven small cabins for passengers. I made friends with a Catholic priest on board. When we disembarked, the priest greeted his cargo—a new Mercedes Benz automobile filled with arms.”

“Peter,” I probed, “You know that priests take vows of poverty. What on earth was a priest doing with an expensive German car and a cache of weapons?”

“Recall I was a child,” he reminded me. “Had I been older, I would have asked such questions, but what did I know?”

Following this first taste of the world, Peter never lost his love of travel. Speaking a raft of languages fluently, he has lived in many nations and has a deep love of the varying colors of the many cultures he encounters. Ankor Wat in Cambodia? Several times. Viet Nam. The same. Egypt. Please. He lived there. I found it quite surprising, then, to learn that I had somehow managed to find myself earlier this year in a country in which Peter had never been: Afghanistan. He was utterly captivated with my stories of the challenges the Afghan people face each day: security, education, meaningful work for their hands, a roof over their heads.

“When I met the Chancellor of Kabul Medical University, he said to my student, Mirwais, and me, ‘I am going to tell you about my school, I am going to answer your questions about leadership, and at the end, I am going to ask for your help.’ Peter, that month in Afghanistan transformed me. There is much to do, much to do.”

Peter and I agreed to continue the conversation and to imagine what we might do to continue our work in the world.

“Frog Hot Pot” Special

Beijing Redux
Once more over the South China Sea I flew and once more I arrived in Beijing, where on this occasion I awaited the flight to Shenzhen, a city of 7.2 million, located in Southern China. I was last in Beijing this past May 2008 with 23 of my doctoral students, where we experienced brilliantly clear skies and uncharacteristically clean air quality. Our photos on the Great Wall of China revealed verdant mountains and valleys—a stark contrast to my 2007 visit of lung-choking smoke and fog. Alas, the shroud of smog had again descended on Beijing, for following the Olympics, the factory closures ended and driving restrictions lifted. The setting sun hung a deep umber-orange over the space-age buildings of the airport. It was so smothered with haze that I could stare directly into it without blinking. Otherworldly is the only way to characterize it. My eyes burnt from the heavy air, and my Beijing Cough descended once again.

Chinapolis
Clearly, the environmental impact of this vastly developing nation of 1.3 billion individuals is incalculable, and it is not a matter taken without great controversy both in China and amongst the rest of the citizens of the planet. China has experienced the largest migration in the world’s history, and by 2030, 1 billion of its people will reside in cities. Chinapolis, Foreign Policy magazine’s (November-December 2008) moniker for the most rapidly urbanizing country in the world, has nearly 100 cities with over one million inhabitants, while the United States of America has only nine. When I am here, I reflect often on how the Central Government can curb its massive carbon footprint. I observe in hotel rooms all over the nation small measures such as notices regarding the use of water and the optional reuse of my towels and sheets. How far, however, these measures extend is unclear to me. I am aware that both India and China push back to a great degree, citing the mega-abuse by the United States, which is not a developing nation. More research is clearly warranted.

Western faces were rare as we waited to board the flight to Shenzhen. I counted two among the hundreds of us. On my flight from California, I sat next to an American man whose father was born in China, but who grew up in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States as a young boy. We mused over the remarkable changes in China that his family and he have experienced. He shared with me that his father, although well into his eighties, now has a difficult time with the ideology of the collective over the individual, having spent so much time in the West. How long can the Central Government maintain its tight reign on such a vast population?

Shenzhen, Guondong Province
But what is it that brought me to Shenzhen? Not too many years ago, Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village of 33,000 situated on the Delta. In the 1980s, Deng Xio Ping designated Shenzhen as the first Special Economic Zone, and it became one of several experiments in capitalism. As China prepared to take back Hong Kong in 1997, Shenzhen’s close proximity made it the ideal locale to build the bridge between the two worlds. Foreign Policy magazine just named Shenzhen on its global cities index—a distinction of cities it asserts “shape our lives the most.” Just several days ago, UPS announced Shenzhen would serve as its Asia hub. If you thought Shenzhen only makes your sneakers, you would be wrong. If you imagined that all the IT work still goes to India and all the knowledge workers live in Bangalore, you would be surprised. Its major industries are information technology, software, construction, food processing, and medical supplies. You can start a business here in a mere 30 days. Although many of its highest hills were leveled in the name of progress, many still remain, and with the summer rainy season and its yearly brush with typhoons, Shenzhen is lush with palm trees, bougainvilla, and other vegetation suited for warm climes, and the city flows effortless to the delta where beaches beckon.

Tsinghua Experimental School
Earlier this year I learned of a Vice Principal of a large experimental school in Shenzhen, Carl Liu, who was interested in building a relationship between his school, Tsinghua Experimental School, and schools in America. What began as a long distance conversation, continued with this visit, where I am spending a week at this school of 6200 children. I agreed to visit Tsinghua on my way to presenting at the Asian Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in Singapore and to explore the possibility of a relationship with the school and with Shenzhen University. I have spent two days now, observing classrooms, meeting with teachers and school leaders, and presenting to nearly 150 a workshop on transforming schools for the twenty-first century so that each child may learn.

Frog Hot Pot
Carl and my hosts have been overwhelmingly gracious and welcoming. They have housed me in one of the top hotels in the city and I have been treated to a variety of cuisine from several provinces. Carl said that it is said in China that if you want good food, you come to Guandong Province. I have to agree. Over a luncheon of assorted mushrooms bathed in black bean sauce, cucumber soup with tofu puffs, and a variety of other dishes, I explained to him that my experience of Chinese cuisine to this point had been mightily disappointing. I suggested it could have been because my two prior visits with a tour of my doctoral students were designed for the comfort of Western tourists and we visited only restaurants which catered to our sort. How else could one explain a plate of white bread and a mountain of French fries in a Chinese restaurant?

During the May tour, my students, who for the most part, were world travelers, bordered on mutiny by Day Four “if they saw one more dish of fried rice.” In Xi’an, Day Five, we were treated to hot pot—flavorful pots of broth with over a dozen sorts of foods one could cook in the steaming liquid. Sauces abounded and the students were delighted. The beer flowed freely. I had not seen my group more animated for days. I do recall some small amount of conversation about one of the meats perhaps being dog meat, but no one complained and ate voraciously. On our way to see the terra cotta warriors the next day, our tour guide, Rocky Stone (yes, that is his Western name), joked that if anyone missed the bus, they could stay on in Xi’an for dog hot pot. Everyone roared with laughter at the thought of eating Little Fluffy. One of the school leaders told me that if I spend any more time in China, I’ll be requesting snake and the other Chinese delicacies. Right.

Imagine my surprise when Carl took me to a restaurant famous not for dog hot pot but for frog hot pot. I laughed to myself, knowing my students would find this uproariously amusing, but comforted myself with the thought that frog tasted like chicken. I had eaten frogs’ legs on several occasions in my life and imagined this new iteration would be wonderful. It was. Two broths—one laced with ginger and garlic and a second with spicy Szechuan peppers—served as the base for the frogs’ legs, fresh Enoki and oyster mushrooms, and firm, snow-white tofu. We cooked the foods in the flavorful broths and managed between us to consume the better part of the vat. In a matter of an hour, my Beijing cough evaporated as the soothing vapors of the soup cleared my sinuses and paved the way for more adventures.