Switzerland And Me

On the occasion of the 70^th anniversary of China-Switzerland diplomatic relations

As philosophers say, life is composed of contingencies, yet there also exists some certainty. At first, a contingency bonded me to Switzerland. But did it result from some certainty? Let destiny be the judge.

In a newly released movie called Me And My Hometown, there is an episode about a Chinese professor who teaches in Switzerland. When he was suffering from a cerebral infarction, his mind returned to memories of 1992, the year he was a teacher in a rural primary school. If you want to see how a Chinese professor studied abroad in Switzerland in those days, let’s go back to the year 1987, five years earlier than in the movie.

I was the general manager in a state-owned company in China’s Fujian Province. One day I saw a document in the Fujian Economic And Trade Committee, issued by the State Economic Committee and China Enterprise Confederation. It said that provincial economic committees and provincial enterprise confederations could recommend executives to go abroad for further education. This project and the education it provided were to be funded by the governments of the target countries. I recall the destinations including the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and so on and so forth. There were over ten possible opportunities, some of which were special managerial projects, like urban planning and production management courses, while few of them were complex managerial projects. I took a fancy to the project in Switzerland at first sight. It required three-month’s study at the International Management Institute (IMI), the former International Institute for Management Development, in Geneva. As far as I was concerned, I would visit all the listed countries via business trips someday, except Switzerland. Therefore, I applied for the project to Switzerland. Only two applicants would be invited to take part, and they were required to be leaders in large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises or managerial study professors in universities. The applicants also needed to pass two rounds of tests: an English test organized by the State Economic Committee, and another organized by the Embassy of Switzerland..

I passed the unified test organized by the SEC and probably got a high score. But the 1986 project to Switzerland was ultimately canceled. Then, I was told that because applicants from Taiwan would also be in the class, China had decided to stop sending people to Switzerland. The official in charge of the project at that time asked me if I wanted to transfer to another project, but I chose to wait firmly, even though there was also some uncertainty in the 1987 project. Fortunately, I made the right choice. I became one of the two candidates for the Switzerland project. The other one was the deputy head of the department of management in a university in Beijing.

I paid a special visit to Beijing for the test organized by the Embassy of Switzerland. The embassy was located in a small building with a large yard. After the commercial counselor received me, he took out a portion of an English newspaper and asked me to translate an article into Chinese. After I finished the translation, he talked with me, asking questions like why would I want to go to Switzerland, how much did I know about this country, what did I do at the moment, and so on and so forth. We chatted as if it was not an interview. At the end of our discussion, he praised my English proficiency, and I had successfully passed the test.

April 1987, I arrived in Geneva as scheduled. IMI was located not far from Switzerland’s border with France. It looked like a park, with a scattering of small buildings in the widespread green. In April, flowers bloomed all around Geneva. The lake was clear, and the swans were incubating their children peacefully in the middle of the lake. Streets and alleys were too clean to even find a bit of dust. You didn’t need to polish your shoes, and your collars wouldn’t get dirty at all. Buses arrived on time, no more than a minute early or late. But life there was also costly. My first haircut cost me 30 swiss francs. At that time, the exchange rate between the Swiss franc and the Chinese RMB was 1:5.6. This one haircut ended up costing me two months of my salary in China. One day, I had a meal with my British classmate and his wife in their apartment. After the meal, his wife helped me cut my hair. As you can imagine, I was extremely thankful. My classmate was the president of a bank in the UK, and many years later, the couple went travelling to China. I was happy to finally have the opportunity to return their kindness by offering them an extraordinary reception, which made them both feel extremely flattered. Last year, I saw that the price for a haircut was still 30 Swiss francs in a hair salon beside a hotel in Zurich. I recalled the memory from all those years ago, so I got my hair cut in Switzerland again. My monthly salary was already far beyond 30 Swiss francs by then, but I should say, the price was still three times as much as it in China.

Looking back, the tutoring I received at IMI was an abridged version of today’s EMBA courses. Both of them have similar curriculums and length of courses, but in my project, the courses were all taught in one hundred days. The tuition was over 30,000 Swiss francs, equaling nearly 200,000 RMB, an unbelievable amount of money in China at that time. We had over thirty classmates from fifteen or sixteen countries: Germany, the UK, France, Finland, Italy, South Africa, etc. I was the only one from China. The other candidate, who was the deputy head of a university in Beijing, didn’t come. I didn’t know why. Undoubtedly, I was the poorest student in the class, and the only student funded by the Swiss government. One day I joked with my classmates who drove Mercedes-Benz or Rolls Royce vehicles. I said, although you have fancy cars, you don’t have a chauffeur, but I do. They all laughed.

We were taught by professors from European universities. Some scenes in the class still stand out in my mind. The first is a female professor who always liked to show her off-colored humor before the lesson. While everyone was laughing, she would write something on the blackboard, then turn to us and say, “Well, well, well …” The lesson followed. The second concerns the professors’ accents while speaking English, which were very hard for me to get used to. Much like when foreigners learn standard Chinese Mandarin, they hardly understand the dialects and accents of Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong. This made me strongly feel that to learn English, one should spend less time on pronunciation. Speaking fluently was enough. The third was a map drawn by the professor teaching global trade. The Chinese mainland was portrayed too small compared to the size of Taiwan. He regarded the volume of trade as one of the metrics calculating a country’s contribution to the world. After the class, my classmate asked me if I agreed with him. I said no, because when China solved its own problems well, it solved the problems for a quarter of the world’s population. My classmate asked me why I didn’t stand up and refute the teacher. I said because my English was not good enough for a debate. And Chinese students didn’t usually refute their teachers. He said: “But we paid to hire the teachers to teach.” His view was impactful for me. The fourth was the homework assigned at the beginning of the course by our class teacher for the end of all the classes. It included questions like “choose three of your classmates who are: your favorite bosses, your favorite partners, your favorite subordinates.” And there was also a question asking us to choose three of our classmates who were “your dislikes.” The results would be announced and explained in the class discussion. It was too hard for me. I don’t remember how I finished the task at the end of the course. I only remember hearing the teacher say with a smile that all Asian students have the same trouble.

I remember another impressive event. An education official from the Swiss Government, who was in charge of the project I joined, sent me an invitation to visit the Department of Education in Bern, with an appointed date and round-trip train tickets. I arrived on as scheduled, and a genial, middle-aged woman welcomed me. We talked for a while. I haven’t figured out why the tickets were attached, but perhaps  she considered that I might not be able to pay. To be frank, in Switzerland, once I thought of the prices as converted to RMB, I didn’t want to buy anything. Nowadays, it’s difficult for people to imagine how a man, with a monthly salary of less than 20 Swiss francs, would think and behave in a market in Switzerland.

During my stay in Switzerland, I visited Germany, Italy and France during my days off. I stayed in my local classmates’ houses and walked freely on the road in those countries. That was a precious opportunity. One could hardly imagine having a chance like that again. We didn’t know at the time that after many years, we would walk as we choose in every country, and we would have monthly salaries far more than dozens of Swiss francs. At that time, you were required to apply for a visa if you wanted to go to another country from Switzerland. I wanted to apply for the trip to Paris and I was told that I had to wait for three months, which was impossible for me. The time left for me in Switzerland was shorter than three months. Considering that at the border with France passports would be chosen to be checked randomly, I was determined to take a risk. A trip to Paris was more than a temptation. I didn’t want to let this opportunity go. I held a service passport then, which means if I entered another country with no visa, it would be a significant violation of the rules of foreign affairs, and my career would be impacted. But I wanted to take this risk. I didn’t go through the border check post by my classmate’s car. Instead, I detoured to another place on the border, where I had previously investigated. Then, I walked to the highway. The car and my French classmate were waiting for me on the wayside. I returned to Switzerland by train. When I arrived in Geneva, I discovered that there was another visa check at the exit. Fortunately, it was also a random check. Frankly speaking, I was very nervous at the moment, but I passed by with pretentious calm. My passport wasn’t checked. God blessed. I went back to Geneva successfully.

One of my classmates came from Heidelburg, Germany. I stayed at his house when I was in Heidelburg, and surprisingly found that he was interested in Tibetan culture. His living room was decorated with many Tibetan artifacts and decorations. They were sympathetic with Tibet. We intentionally avoided this topic. I sensed great cultural differences. In Heidelburg, I visited Heidelburg University, a beautiful university built beside a mountain. In Paris, I stayed in the house of a classmate as well. He lived in the suburbs of Paris, so I needed to take the train to the urban area every day. At that time, the tourist’s guidebook was always in my hand. I eagerly visited many places: the Louvre Museum, Musee d’Orsay, Notre Dame de Paris, Triumphal Arch, and of course, Moulin Rouge. These are the places you must go to when you are in Paris. After every five-star spot, I went to four-star ones, then three- or two-star ones like Musée Rodin and Musee Marmottan. Though some trips overlapped, you couldn’t do better when in a totally strange place. Thanks to the well-established metro system in Paris. It was a great convenience.

Studying in Switzerland broadened my horizons, which I didn’t realize at that time. In 1987, China was at the early stage of its Reform and Opening-up. The gap between China and other countries was huge. Thirty-three years ago, I would never have expected the great achievements that China has made today. I would never have expected that I would have the opportunity to establish a school in Switzerland. Thirty-three years ago, the seed of friendship with Switzerland was sowed in my heart. Time flies. The second time I went to Switzerland was in 2007, 20 years after the project, when I was invited to attend a meeting organized by the United Nations. I was filled with all sorts of feelings. Switzerland didn’t change a lot, nor did Geneva. But China had taken on an entirely new look then. We appreciate the creativity, harmony, democracy, diversity and high-quality lifestyles in Switzerland. And we are learning from them. The friendship between Switzerland and China is a tradition as well as the reality.

In 2013, I established Xinrui Business School, supported by the Chinese government and some private foundations. Leaders from both countries witnessed our joint program cooperating with the University of Zurich. The program offers more opportunities for Chinese youngsters to study in Switzerland. Who should be happier, them or me thirty-three years ago? I hope that they will love Switzerland like I do and make contributions towards the friendship and cooperation of the two countries. It was a great honor for me that I was awarded a certificate for my “outstanding contributions to the Switzerland-China relations” by the Swiss government.

In thirty years, it will be the 100^th anniversary for the China-Switzerland diplomatic ties. Will the students trained jointly by Xinrui Business School and University of Zurich be writing down their remembrance of Switzerland with full affection? How will China, Switzerland, and their relations be? I believe that the two countries will still be best friends. I believe that I will still be one of the many who will write of fond memories.