China certainly isn’t the same anymore as when I visited it in 1996. While most people know how China is becoming market leader in many fields, few people realize how little the Beijing inhabitants were used to seeing Western people, only 27 years ago. Walking through the streets of Beijing, we continuously saw people point their fingers at us, laugh at us, join us to ask many questions about the West, or simply look at us with jaw-dropping faces. And as is (or was?) often the case in Asian countries, we were requested to pose for many photoshoots.
It was lovely to visit the palaces and cultural sites of Beijing, even if they typically charged us foreigners about 200 times as much as the locals. Some did not, such as hairdressers who charged us about one euro for a terrible hair cut, so we took a bunch of haircuts until they got it right, and we while still had hair. We travelled sometimes with a group of Dutch people; some of them were there to secure business deals to export tulips to China. I expect that now, 27 years later, these people will be millionaires if they secured the deal. I, on the other hand, was there to visit a space related conference to present my very first scientific paper about the use of genetic algorithms to transfer spacecraft to Geostationary orbits.
Visiting the space conference was very cool. Papers were exchanged (in paper, not digitally), interesting presentations were given giving new techniques to calculate satellite trajectories. But I had something heavier on my mind: I was about to give my very first presentation. And it was to be for a large, unknown crowd. Having a shy personality, I was worried. My mentor, Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels, was co-author of my paper so the evening before we set down and discussed our strategy, without rehearsing as we were confident. We would follow his presentation style and start with the introduction and problem description, and halfway through I would take over and present the results. I was ready to present…I thought..
Unfortunately nerves got a hold of me and while presenting I forgot what I wanted to say, so a very long awkward silence followed. I did recover, and finished the presentation. That didn’t go well then! Irony is that today, I am a team leader, presenting on a daily basis. My conclusion was that I should prepare my own way for presentations, and this became a bit of a trademark within my life. My next presentation, my master thesis defense, I must have practiced about five times with my dog as spectator, and even today whenever I go for a climb, a race, or a presentation, I rehearse; I went to Broad Peak before considering Everest, and did many trackdays before even considering to do a race. It helped big time. My experience in China was a wise lesson.
During the final days of our stay, we visited the Great Wall. It was populated, mostly with Chinese tourists. My climbing desire came out and I decided to walk on the wall going upward, following a mountain slope. The higher I got, the fewer people I saw until eventually I was walking all by myself. This was a special moment that 27 years later, I still remember well. When I left I did not realize that if ever I were to return, China would not be the same country again. You won’t get surprised looks anymore in Beijing, you now see high quality cars, can get high quality electronics, and population has grown to almost 1.5 billion people. I left Beijing with a lesson learned, and never returned.
Ciao!
Robin
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