Friday, September 21, 2007 Lee: The Beijing Principles By Kelvin King Lee Babble on
THIS Column started out with me living and writing in Beijing. I lived in the capital of China for a few years, studied Chinese and made a living. I even fell in love (which is a story for another day).
In short, I made a life there, and it was a good life. While there, I managed to not only survive, but even thrive. I was a training consultant for a number of different companies in Beijing. I taught English in several schools and wrote articles for a local magazine. And this was on top of writing this weekly opinion column for the Sun.Star Davao. I was independent, self-sufficient and more confident than I had ever been in my entire life, up to that point.
Doing all that wasn't easy. I was in a foreign land, knew no one, had no connections, did not speak the language, was stuck in a city where the natives were not exactly what you would call friendly, and had to compete with westerners nearly everywhere. So I cried myself to sleep the first few nights I was there (yes, yes, tears are for women. I cried anyway).
So how did I manage to thrive? Well, I used what I now call my Beijing Principles, named in honor of the fact that I learned them while living in Beijing. These principles were the key to my survival in Beijing, but can be applied by anyone in almost any situation.
1.) Learn the Language - Living abroad and practically alone in a foreign country means you HAVE to learn the language. This is an obvious non-negotiable. There is no other way around it. To go out and eat, you must know how to speak the native language. To make friends, pay the bills, talk to the cab driver or government officials, you have to speak the language.
Speaking the language fluently can open amazing opportunities. One Dabawenyo, Adrian Lui, learned to speak fluent Chinese while in Beijing and was soon offered a managerial position in the Chikka.com China office. Adrian is in great demand as a manager because he is effectively and fluently bilingual
(Chinese and English), which is very rare. Most people are weaker in one language, but Adrian, who took the Chinese language to heart, can speak and write in both languages as though they were his native tongues. Learn the language of the place you are in, master it, and watch the opportunities open up.
2.) Fall in Love - Fall in love with the city you are in, or the culture, or the language, or the people. You need to feel love and passion in order to thrive in any environment. If you hate the city or the people of the place you are in, there is no way you can survive. The negativity in you will knock any chance of getting anywhere out of your system. You will wind up taking the first plane out of there. Be passionate. Fall in love. I know I did.
3.) Find a Support Group - I had two basic support groups while I lived in Beijing. One was the Filipino community in Beijing, who were able to give me tips based on their own experience as Filipinos, and another was a group of foreigners who also advised me and supported me, but from the perspective of other cultures. Knowing that I wasn't the only one who was an outsider in Beijing, and that I had friends whom I could call on, made each day just a little bit easier.
How do you connect to a support group? Well, Rico Hizon, the Filipino Broadcaster who works with the BBC and is based in Singapore, went straight to the Philippine Embassy when he moved to Singapore, and from there he was able to become part of the Filipino community. In Beijing, I was able to connect to the
Filipino community through our Embassy as well, but I only went to the Embassy after being introduced to a fellow Filipino connected to the Embassy by a Belgian friend of mine, of all people. I would never have found that support group without the Belgian, which brings me to the next principle.
4.) Expand Your Circle - One thing about Filipinos is that we are very cliquish. We tend to stick to our own people. Even in the Philippines we tend to group ourselves by region or city or language. But in a foreign environment, expanding your circle of friends is a good idea. You never know where it will lead you. I am no extrovert myself, I don't make friends easily. But while in Beijing, my group of friends included an Indonesian, a Belgian, a few British guys, Americans, and a lot of native Chinese. They introduced me to different facets of the world, and expanded my worldview in the process. I now look at the world, and Beijing, differently, thanks to them.
5.) Be Willing to Try New Things - Be willing to try new things. Don't be scared of trying, even if you fail, you can always, literally, try again. When I was in Beijing, I had never ever written for a living before. I had written for high school newsletters, but that had no pay involved. On a trip home to Davao from Beijing, I approached the publisher of Sun.Star Davao and showed him some of my work. He gave me a shot and so I wrote some articles for them, which later became a regular thing - this Babble On column you are reading now. When I got back to Beijing, I saw in the classifieds that That’s Beijing, a widely circulated expatriate magazine, was looking for freelance writers. Although I had minimal professional writing experience at the time (I had been writing Babble On for barely a month then) I was accepted into their pool of writers and soon had regular writing assignments from them. So you see, my entire writing career would never have happened if I hadn't been willing to at least TRY.
6.) Work Hard and Smile - In my teaching and consultancy work, I had to compete against Westerners with degrees from famous universities, or against
Westerners who were older and had more experience. So the question that consistently came to mind during job interviews over there was this: What did a young, barely out of college kid, with almost no experience or skills, and from a third world country, have to offer? My consistent answer to them was hard work. I would work harder than any of your other candidates. And I would smile while doing it too (which is very Filipino), because having a positive, cheerful attitude, as Rico Hizon would say, injects productivity in the workplace. And you know what? 4 times out of 5, they would pick me as their consultant. One company liked my work and positive attitude so much that I was offered a full-time position a few months after I started consulting for them on a part-time basis. Hard work and a positive attitude is a great combination in any country, and can put one on the road to success.
7.) Keep in Touch - When living in a foreign country, one needs to touch base with friends and family back home. It’s perhaps one of the few constants to staying sane while living abroad. No matter how busy or crazy my work schedule got (remember, I was often juggling several consultancy, teaching and writing jobs all at the same time), I always made sure I emailed my family and close friends once a week. My Belgian friend would purposely buy hundreds of dollars worth of phone cards so she could call and talk to her family in Belgium. She would talk for hours on end. The huge costs didn't matter to her. What mattered to her was that she kept in touch with her family. Afterwards, she would be happy and upbeat and it often reflected in her work and relationships. Don't underestimate the principle of keeping in touch. You will be surprised at how just talking to your mom or your friend back home, can inspire you.
8.) Have Faith - One constant in Beijing and even when I was here in the Philippines, was the idea in my head that there was something greater than myself. For a long time, I was never really sure what it was, except that I knew there was something guiding and leading me, wherever I went. Soon, I figured out that my belief was a form of Faith. I just never realized that was what it was. I prayed every night for example, just before I went to sleep. I could never fall asleep without praying. And although I didn't go to church while I was in Beijing, having faith and believing that there was something greater than myself, helped make things easier. It gave me a sense of purpose, one that persists to this day.
George W. Bush, the 43rd US president would say that "his faith guides him and moves him." Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president credited for bringing down the iron curtain of the Soviet Union, had an incredibly strong faith and would even end his speeches with his signature “God Bless You.” In a letter to Cardinal Law, the archbishop of Boston, Reagan wrote that “my own prayer is that I can…perform the duties of this position so as to serve God.” Faith gave these presidents their own sense of purpose, and allowed them to survive in their own situations.
And in a sense, this is the most important principle of all. Because faith, whether in oneself, or in a something greater than oneself, as in the case of
Bush and Reagan, can literally, move mountains. So have faith, and move some mountains.
(Email me at babbleoncolumn@yahoo.com. Yu can also visit the author's website and blog atww.kelvinlesterlee.wordpress.com)
