Missing out on well cooked love during Spring Festival

In every day life, I find it more than justified to eat only vegetarian food. Better for my health, for my ecologic footprint, for animal welfare, for my yoga practice, just about everything. Right? Vegetarianism is never easy to maintain in China where eating meat is a human right for some and the highlight of the day for others, and I have often bent my own rules to not go hungry. But I still try, and it has become an integral part of how people describe me here.

Buddhist cuisine

Last week I visited my friends home in a smaller town, and we spend much time at his parents house celebrating the Chinese New Year. For ten days, parents have a chance to spoil their children to death. Nainai and Yeye (grandma and grandpa) were busy from morning til evening in the kitchen, preparing all the dishes for our lunches and dinners. Because how better to show your love than through food? And how better to show your love than through slow cooked mutton, or Yeye's home salted and wind dried pork, or his carefully chopped and fried beef? The finest, most expensive, most complicated dishes lovingly all prepared for the guests at this special time.

Word had traveled that I wouldn't eat meat or fish and my habit was taken more than seriously. Dishes were always arranged so that I was surrounded with veggie food. Lovely, refined, delicious vegetables and tofu. But the frown on Yeye's forehead showed his disappointment. He knew I missed the best part of the festival.

Three small acts that made a world of difference

For the past 2,5 years I worked with a Chinese NGO, called Be Better or 上海百特教育咨询中心. I started off doing some translation and proposal writing, and when I left last weekend my title had transformed to ‘Deputy Director General’. All this time I was the only non-Chinese in a team of eventually 33, and for most of my colleagues, their first foreign acquaintance or friend. It wasn’t always easy, or smooth to say the least. Three reflections after a few rewarding years. 

Cupcakes for a better team spirit

I found myself in a small team that was very task oriented. Our weekly meetings where a series of one-on-one talks with our director who told us what to do and how. There was hardly any talking at all, but for the occasional whisper or QQ chat message. A very awkward situation in my eyes, and while I tried very hard to blend in with the culture, I must have broken it at the same time, because at some point I found myself teaching English every Monday afternoon and bringing home made cupcakes. Once our director came in and found us all having a great time discussing how foreigners declare their love to each other. Would he be angry with me? Tell us to get back to work? He joined us of course, and carried a big smile that day.

During a teacher training in Yangzhou 2012

If scared… act

The first time I fully step forward and bring everything I have to the team is scary beyond imagination. I will organise a day at the end of the year, providing a safe space to discuss difficulties. I have kept the schedule a secret, demanding lots of trust from the busy team. We start with a long check in where the first tears start to flow. There is room to speak with people you are not familiar with, and for a while everyone is buzzing with questions and talk. Then we get to the scariest part: our two program managers are put in the middle one by one for a sort of family constellation exercise. I ask them to invite all their aides and tell them where to stand, then reflect together. The number of less than perfect relationships is endless. I am shocked but confident, the tool works wonders. I have demanded trust, but more than anything, I have given my trust in their ability to be honest but soft. Afterwards, we did many similar days and meetings, but it never reached that level of magic again. 

A program management training in Shanghai 2015

Manoeuvring girls politics...

With a huge female majority our team suffered lots from hormonal fluctuations. One week a month, we all had a depression, felt sick and demotivated: everyone at the same time. Some colleagues where friends before, and disliked each other now, and newcomers usually made it to be accepted into the inner circle at once, or just never. As things are always organised last minute, everyone depended on personal favours for help from others. Building friendships was essential, and given the 24/7 dedication of most staff, private life completely mixed up with work. I managed to do what I always try: put work first, and build relations accordingly. If I was work-friends with two girls who hated each others guts, so be it. I wil listen to all your blackmailing, and draw my own conclusions (after all, I am a girl too!). But we get the work done and others know they can trust me on my word to deliver. 

Buddy talk during a team building day 2014

… but appreciate the boys best

My most unexpected work-friendship was with Future, our bookkeeper. He picked up English from my endless questions and requests, and started teaching me finance, and excel, and Chinese tax, and I knew we were really good together when he got angry with me twice for being late and sloppy. Looking back, we together changed how project managers should deal with their finances, and it never felt heavy or boring as Future is the most comical person in Shanghai, if not China and has an unforgettable KTV performance. 

A little bit more about the teacher training

So there I was in Yangzhou, with 50 other people all attending the Aflatoun teacher training.
I have been working with Be Better, an organisation that trains teachers to teach social and financial skills. Our teaching methods are quite different from regular Chinese teaching, and so it takes a very intense training and follow up for the teachers to start implementing it in their schools.

All the activities we did are meant to do in your classroom. That was fun! We played games, discussed, brainstormed, made paper towers and solved puzzles. And if you think it was easy peasy, no it wasn't. Kids must be geniuses to do all this. And so are teachers.


One little example: we all sat in groups, and got few sheets of newspaper, some cellotape, and a scissors. The assignment was to make a tower, as high as possible, yet as creative as possible. And we couldn't talk. So my group had a lot of fun all the time, but we usually under performed at all the assignments. We lacked guys I think. We rolled the newspapers, taped them, made a lame construction at the bottom end, tried to stick them together to stand up... Our tower was a disgrace, it kept coming down. In the mean time we sneaked at our neighbours who were born winners, their tower was beautiful and had already reached the ceiling. I decided to give it one last shot, and used a bit of cellotape to stick ours to the sprinkler system. All of a sudden it looked fabulous! My team mates couldn't stop laughing, and tried to hide the fact that our tower was no longer standing on the floor.


Afterwards there was time to discuss implementation. How do you do this in your class room? When? How does it work when you have 50 students? How do you sell it to the parents who are mostly just concerned about their kids getting high grades?

Yangzhou, beautiful city

Last week we had a teacher training in Yangzhou, a place not too far from Shanghai. One of the famous water towns, with great food and beautiful cultural heritage. Or so it said online.

Our hotel was few steps away from the busstation, two huge roads in front of it. The area around it depressingly ugly. But staying inside a hotel for a whole week is just too much, so I ventured out during a few siesta breaks and tried to find some places worth taking a picture of.

Little white houses along a canal

Here's a few sights:

A Buddhist temple

Dongguan, a nice old street with traditional shops

Just in case you were wondering what is outside the frame of the pictures, here is one fascinating example of ugliness: the white houses stood indeed along the canal, but the sight was blocked by a billboard of 100 meters long. When I came to the end of the billboard I walked towards the water to see what on earth was written on it: a picture of a village from hundreds of years ago.