Tax Travel
We’ve reached Lisbon in Portugal, and at this point I should explain why we’re doing so much traveling.
It’s not *just* because we’re making up for being away from Europe for 4 years, although that’s a big part of it. It’s also because every 6 years, everyone on a work permit in China is obliged to leave for 30 days in order to avoid being taxed on their global income. So we decided to spend the month of August visiting a combination of places which have some kind of family significance (🇬🇧🇨🇿🇦🇹) as well as places we’ve been hearing about from Asia for many years (🇲🇹🇵🇹).
We thought that at this point we might have become a little tired of being on the move for so long. And it’s true that we’re starting to get bored of all our clothes. But Lisbon has far too much to offer to make weariness an option. Unfortunately that includes tapas bars, where it’s way too easy to over-order on the unpasteurised cheeses and the white port cocktails. So maybe that’ll fix the problem with our clothes, since we’ll soon be needing a whole new wardrobe of elastic-waisted sweatpants and loose-fitting muumuus. 🎈🐷
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A Compact Tour of Malta & Gozo
Our Maltese adventure is at an end. Malta is the world’s 10th smallest country, and everything about it is compact: compact land-mass; compact streets; compact cars. We hired one of them and zipped around from place to place, and all on one tank of petrol. 🚗
It’s convenient that English is one of the official languages of Malta, because the Maltese language is pretty impenetrable. Everyone, don’t forget to dot your Ġs and cross your Ħs… 🤷♂️ There are more than 360 churches here, which means there’s one church for every 1,000 residents. ⛪️ But you’ll be happy to know that I didn’t include too many of them in this video compilation.
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Bohemia & Vienna
I couldn’t have hoped for a better birthday, at the end of a great week that family Fuchs/Fox/Lindsey/Newell will remember for many years to come.
We were expecting the discomfort of an August heatwave, and hordes of tourists. Instead we had a surprising amount of rain, but relatively empty streets. So I guess it worked out OK on balance..? ☔️⚖️🤷♂️ Maybe the proof is in the video watching.
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The Ninth Person On This Trip
We decided to bring three generations together for a Czech family pilgrimage, in this one unique window of opportunity: while Denny and I were visiting Europe from Shanghai; while Dad and Ann were still young enough to travel; while memories of our family history were still fresh in our minds; and before my teenage nephews Benjamin and Jacob flew the coop to university. On top of that, having been unable to spend any time together as a family during COVID times, it was also the perfect way to force us all to be in each other’s company for a week. The last time I saw my nephews, they were children. Now they are mountain-sized adults, whose cheeky personalities I feel like I’m getting to know for the first time.
Along with my brother Daniel and his wife Helen, the 9th person accompanying us on this trip is the spirit of my Grandmother (Babička). We started the trip in Prague, where she had ended up after the war, and where my father and uncle Jirka were subsequently born. And we’re making our way down to her birthplace of Vienna. But yesterday we made a special visit to the sleepy town of Milevsko in Southern Bohemia. That’s where Babička’s parents in Vienna (the Neumanns) had desperately sent her and her sister to live with their grandparents (the Aschermanns) after the annexation of Austria into the German Reich in 1938. She was 17, her sister was 15, and their little brother had been too young to travel, so had stayed in Vienna with his parents.
Babička was the only member of the Neumann and Aschermann families to survive the holocaust. The building where she lived in Milevsko has since been knocked down and rebuilt into a hardware store. And the local synagogue has since been reconsecrated into a church.
At the entrance to the church, there was a very nice memorial to the old synagogue, and to the victims of the holocaust from the town. Despite all this loss, the fact that the Aschermanns’ great great great grandchildren could pose for a photo in front of this memorial was enough to feel like we were breathing fresh life into the memory of my family, and all the other Jewish families of Milevsko.
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My Rabbi Aaron
I want to introduce you all to my Rabbi in North-West London, Rabbi Aaron Goldstein. He generously made time for an impromptu coffee together while I’m here on a short visit.
He’s an amazing leader for the local community, as well as a tireless advocate for women, for the Jewish diaspora in Ukraine, for immigrants in the UK, for LGBT+ inclusion, for Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, for democracy in Israel, and for many more causes that a lot of us talk about but don’t know how to support. And on top of all that, he’s just… a nice guy.
We only had 20 minutes together, but just knowing that people like him exist makes me feel a bit better about this forsaken little planet. 🌍💙
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London Homecoming
Don’t wait until the next wedding, or the next funeral. We can always make the effort to meet each other, simply to show that we value the connection we have with one another. 👫
After four years away, this was by far the best of all London homecomings. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in these photos who had been feeling nervous about seeing each other again. We’ve all become so adult, so independent. So concerned with our own family units, our own problems. But in the end it took just one afternoon to forget about the years apart, and to get back to making new memories together. 🥰
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Fifteen Years of Nurture
For the last 15 years, I have nurtured a network of HR and Talent leaders around the world, but especially in Tokyo. My ethos was always simply to treat everyone as human beings, rather than to commoditise relationships by treating them as “clients” or “candidates.”
I’m not sure I was always successful in this endeavour. But now that I’ve retired as a headhunter, I’m happy that I can still count so many of them as friends. And I’m grateful that a handful of these special people were able to make some time for a meet-up in this special city.
過去15 年間、私は世界中、特に東京において人事および人材リーダーのネットワークを築いて来ました。私の理念は常に、すべての人を「顧客」や「候補者」として扱うことで関係性を商品化せず、人として関わることでした。
この取り組みで常に成功したかどうかはわかりません。しかし、ヘッドハンターとして引退した今でも、たくさんの人をまだ友人と呼べることに満足しています。そして、少数の特別な人たちと時間を共有し、この特別な都市で集まれたことに感謝しています。
これからもよろしきお願いします❣️
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Touchdown Tokyo!
東京にタッチダウン🗼‼️
Touchdown Tokyo!
I’m back in the country where my love affair with Asia first started back in 1999. 😳
And what better way to spend the day than people-watching in Shinagawa, kaiten-sushi in Shinjuku, scramble-crossing in Shibuya, and a coffee date in Akasaka with the beautiful Sonya Ito. 💜👫💜
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Three Tips for Visiting Singapore
It WAS NOT a mistake to spend the last two weeks in Singapore, reconnecting with a city that I love. 🇸🇬🥰
But it WAS a mistake to wait until the end of my trip to post photos. Thank you to everyone who could make it for a reunion. And sorry to those I missed, I physically couldn’t squeeze in one more thing!
3 key points I’m glad I remembered:
1️⃣ Don’t be in a rush. You’re on the equator.
2️⃣ Don’t eat spicy laksa wearing anything white.
3️⃣ Dry between your toes. This place is fecund.
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Eighteen Days in California
The theme of our California trip has been: over-stimulation.
We spent most of 2022 under a bit of a cloud. Despite everything, we’ve managed to keep happy for the most part. But maybe it’s been the kind of happiness that requires a lot of effort, and a sprinkling of self-delusion. So to be thrust out into the elements of California has been an assault to the senses. Speaking for myself, people would have either met an excited bouncing clown (usually soaked in gin, let’s be honest), or a confused mole-man who has recently been introduced to society and clearly needs to do more work on their social skills. But it has been our mission to jam in as much into the last three weeks as we have lacked these last three years. Mission accomplished.
We now begin our return to Shanghai. And we have been re-introduced to a feeling that we have missed these last few years: being happy to come back to our home. We live a comfortable, privileged life and we enjoy the adventure of being in a place that challenges us every single day. But we also know what we are missing by living on the other side of the world to so many family and friends. So a massive thank you to everyone who we met for a brief time on this trip. I am one happy clown/mole-man. 🤡🐀
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The Great Escape
It’s been almost 3 years, but we’ve finally made The Great Escape from mainland China! We still can’t believe it’s real. 🤩
We’re spending a week in Hong Kong to decompress, before heading on to California for Christmas and New Year. We’ll be back to Shanghai in January, and if everything goes to plan we hope to do a similar trip to Europe next Summer. 🤞
The first adjustment is definitely the language. It feels bizarre not to be surrounded by Mandarin, and I need to stop reflexively saying ‘ni hao’ and ‘xiexie’. And from now on I need to remember not to curse so brazenly, lest I receive a well-deserved slap in the face.
On second thoughts, who cares? SLAP ME HONG KONG, WE’RE BACK!!! 🇭🇰💚
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I’m So Sorry, Bugs Bunny
As part of a Mosaic of China podcast recording in Chengdu back in early March 2022, I was told by my delightful guest that 300 million rabbit heads are eaten in Sichuan Province every year. So I figured… I should at least try it once.
I’m so sorry, Bugs Bunny. 😵🐰
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An Unexplored Corner of Yunnan Province
We explored a part of Yunnan Province that’s not often visited by international tourists. In all eight years of living in mainland China, we’ve never heard stunned exclamations of “老外! [lǎowài - foreigner]” as often as in the last six days. 😮😯
Things to watch out for in the vid:
👨🍳 Sexy butcher
🪷 Lotus season in Yunnan
🇫🇷 French Indochina railway architecture
🧺 Massive fishing basket
🛕 China’s answer to Gaudi
🐴 Working horses, in a village without cars
⛩ The 2nd-largest Confucian temple in China
🍚 Red rice, which is only grown in this region
🇲🇳 Mongolian village 2000km south of Mongolia
👨✈️ Communist cosplay
🐘 ‘Elephant Tusk’ local vegetable
👩🌾 The Hani, one of 25 Yunnan ethnic minorities
💦 Slow-motion splashing
👨🍳 Did I mention the sexy butcher?
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The Humanising Effect of the Well-timed Selfie
I’m posting this photo from an excursion I took in South-West China just yesterday. Before raising my camera, the people on this tourist bus were keeping to themselves. Afterwards, the whole bus erupted into joyful waves and shouts of “hello” in English.
Yes, the timing of this photo coincides with the Chinese government’s belligerent response to Pelosi’s provocative touchdown in Taiwan. Yes, there is a strand of disgusting ugly nationalism that is on the ascendancy in China, just as it is in many other parts of the world. But I’m posting this for the simple purpose to remind everyone that we should never equate a regime to its people. And we should never let the shrill voices of populists and isolationists deafen us to the humanity of others.
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Geopolitical Quagmire
We’ve traveled to the North East of China, to the ski resort of Beidahu. Planned weeks ago, it now comes as a welcome distraction from doom-scrolling through news apps.
I have Russian friends and I have Ukrainian friends, and none of them support this war. I have Swiss friends, and I have Turkish friends, and none of them predicted this fleeting moment of unity. I have American friends and Chinese friends, and we can all agree on the need to create the conditions that will force a diplomatic off-ramp.
I’m the son of refugees from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It took over 20 years to even begin untangling that mess. And right now I’m on a ski trip not far from North Korea, another decades-long geopolitical quagmire.
I’m just hoping that we’re not witnessing the birth of yet another one. 🇷🇺🌏🇺🇦
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Milestone Anniversary
5 years married. 💍💙
We celebrated the day by picking pu’er tea in the hills of Xishuangbanna, the area where China borders Myanmar and Laos. More photos/videos to come..!
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