Magnolia Award honor for fifty expats
Fifty expatriates from 15 countries were honored with the Shanghai Magnolia Silver Award on December 3 in recognition of their contributions to the city’s development.
At the awards ceremony, Kong Fu’an, director-general of the Shanghai Foreign Affairs Office, expressed his gratitude to expats, saying that they are much more than witnesses to the city’s development, they are in fact active participants and contributors.
“Shanghai will keep reforming and opening up, accelerating cooperation and communication to create a better environment for investing, working and living to attract more expatriates.”
The expatriates, outstanding in various fields ranging from commerce, finance, technology, shipping, health care and culture, are from around the world, namely, Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Alexander Rhys GreggSmith, senior vice president and chief executive of the marine & offshore division North Asia zone and China of Bureau Veritas Marine (China) Co Ltd from the UK, said in his speech that the Magnolia award was more than a mere medal or title. “It is a symbol of the enthusiastic support and warm welcome consistently felt in this truly international megacity,” he noted.
A total of 1,827 expatriates have received the honor of the Magnolia award since its inception in 1989, and the stories of expatriates vary.
Singaporean Linda Painan, who has been in Shanghai for 27 years, regards herself as a part-time entrepreneur, but a full-time volunteer for the non-profit Shanghai Family Life Services Center (The Expat Center) that helps foreigners adjust to life in the city.
“I am immensely honored to get this award and it reaffirms that Shanghai is an inclusive city with a focus on community building.”