Encounters

The Beijing Sound Museum is the creation of British conceptual artist Colin Chinnery. Most of the sounds you’ve heard in the museum can no longer be found in the capital today. Over the past few years, Colin has devoted himself to recording sundry sounds of traditional Beijing culture, as he feels some may soon fade away as urban development accelerates.

Colin Chinnery is a British artist and curator based in Beijing. One of his most popular art works is the Beijing Sound Museum in an old quadrangle courtyard, which recreates the history of the city using only sound.

In the field of economics, there have long been discussions about the underrepresentation of women. Even though in school exams, girls perform as well as boys in math and science, fewer women consider a professional career in these fields. Wang Dan, a China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, shares her views on what it is like to be a female economist in a field that’s so traditionally dominated by men.

Wang Dan is an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. She’s been working in the economic field for more than six years. When asked why she chose economics as her major, Dan says she simply chose it before her college entrance exam because she was good at math. And since then, she has developed a fine enthusiasm for the so-called ‘dismal science’.

As China emerges on the world stage, the 21st century has certainly given Chinese college graduates more career opportunities, both domestic and international. Fu Lu is typical of those Chinese graduates. Before she entered the job market, Fu Lu was lucky enough to get an intern opportunity at the UNEP office in Bangkok. Although her jobs and where she’s worked changed over the past 16 years, her passion about environmental protection has always remained the same.

Fu Lu is the China office director of Clean Air Asia, an international NGO that works for better air quality and healthier, more livable cities in Asia. As a person living in Beijing and a professional working in the field of environmental protection, Fu Lu shares her observations and thinking about air quality issues in China.

In the past two decades, more than 26,000 HIV/AIDS impacted orphans have received an education thanks to the Chi Heng Foundation. Some have now graduated from university, and some have received vocational training, leading to jobs in bakeries and even in well-known five-star hotels. The foundation was founded in 1998 by banker-turned philanthropist Chung To.

The number 127 was a signpost in the career of the former investment banker turned NGO founder Chung To. He’s now the head of the Chi Heng Foundation, the NGO he established in Hong Kong in 1998 with a mere 100 Hong Kong dollars. His decision was driven more by instinct than logic: He had an impulse to help people whose lives were turned upside down by the raging AIDS epidemic. This instinct grew stronger and stronger until, in 2001, he left the world of finance and invested everything he had – money, time, and care – into running Chi Heng. The following year, Chi Heng would rescue its first group of AIDS orphans, 127 in all.

As the world looks towards China to make an even greater contribution, it is worthwhile asking why it has taken so long for China to be a part of the global family of volunteers, and what has stopped the spirit of Chinese hospitality and benevolence from growing into professional volunteerism. Do we as a people or a nation really lack the spirit of a good Samaritan, as many people both inside and outside China have claimed? And if that's true, how could Chinese civilization survived the test of time and maintained its vitality?

As the world looks towards China to make an even greater contribution, it is worthwhile asking why it has taken so long for China to be a part of the global family of volunteers, and what has stopped the spirit of Chinese hospitality and benevolence from growing into professional volunteerism. Do we as a people or a nation really lack the spirit of a good Samaritan, as many people both inside and outside China have claimed? And if that's true, how could Chinese civilization survived the test of time and maintained its vitality?