The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
With ‘English class’, new buildings, Chinese city readies for BRICS
“WELCOME TO Shaa...men (Xiamen). How do you do?” says Lin Lan, 40, pointing to a white board with Chinese characters scrawled on it. “Welcome to Shaa...men. How do you do?” sings back her class of about 40.
An “English Tourism class” is on at the Qianpunan community centre in Xiamen, the city on China’s Southeast coast that will host the ninth BRICS Summit in September, and Lin, a primary school teacher who volunteers at the centre, and her class are preparing to welcome the visitors.
“Xiamen is a tourist city and we will have more people coming for BRICS. It’s good to learn English so that we welcome our guests,” says Lin, speaking through an interpreter.
She says her students - 83 are registered for the class — are mostly homemakers and retired professionals who come to her class every Thursday. “Younger people have other means to learn English — they learn in school or from their phones. Also, older people have more time on their hands,” says Lin.
Lin Shu Rong, 73, is “Director of English classes” at the Qianpunan centre that provides community services — free after-school centre for children, medical centres, counselling etc — to residents of 6,886 households. Not too long ago, she did her “English tourism course” and though she can manage little more than a magical smile and a skillful “how do you do”, she has been motivating other senior citizens like her to join the class.
With five months to go for the BRICS Summit, Xiamen, a port city in Fujian province 2,109 km from Beijing and a major stop for China’s ambitious Old Belt, One Road project, is dressing up for the Summit — from English classes such as this one to a huge infrastructure push by the State, which is reflected in its towering high-rises, leafy sidewalks with sprinklers to suppress dust, freshly transplanted trees propped up with stakes and a giant construction boom, all of it neatly cordoned off by screens.
Yao Jianhong, Head of Coordination at the Xiamen Municipal Preparatory Committee, however, denies the city is being spruced for the Summit. “While all this may look like it is being done for the Summit, it’s not true. This is part of the routine municipal works the city sees round the year,” he says. He adds that Typhoon Meranti, which struck the east coast of China last year, had uprooted thousands of trees in Xiamen and the new trees have been brought to replace those.
Xiamen, much of it an island facing Taiwan across the Strait, has a population of 3.86 million. The three entry points into Xiamen — the Xiamen Gaoqi international airport; the railway station that’s a key stop on the nation’s highspeed rail line; and its maritime port, the 16th largest container port in the world — is hoping to see more business with the BRICS Summit.
“Xiamen will be famous (after BRICS). Everyone’s working hard to make the city beautiful. We have trade relationships with all our BRICS nations. Our economy is developing at around 7 per cent annually, hopefully, the Summit will improve that,” says Chen Yiduan, Deputy Director General of the Xiamen Port Authority.
The Xiamen Summit comes at a time when relations between New Delhi and Beijing have hit a raw nerve over the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh earlier this month. But here in Xiamen, there is no hint of that tension; only a few diplomatic vexations. “When Indians come for the Summit, do you think they will like this food? Will they be happy?” asks an official in Xiamen after an all-vegetarian lunch at a restaurant adjoining a Buddhist temple in the city.