Defending China's stand with passion
'Eating bitterness' is normal for this former peasant
boy from the Guangxi hills. Mr Zhang Jiuhuan, China's
new ambassador to Singapore since August, speaks to
KAO CHEN about China's geopolitical interests.
By Kao Chen
CORRECT and courteous to a fault, Mr Zhang Jiuhuan,
53, is a gentleman of the classic Chinese mould, and
China's Ambassador to Singapore since August.
He is deceptively low-key on first meeting, calling
himself a 'Hakka peasant's son' who grew up balancing
school with working the rice paddies.
'If my mother had not insisted that we should all get
an education, I would have stayed a peasant!' he tells
The Straits Times in Mandarin, over Chinese tea at his
plush residence behind the Botanical Gardens.
Peasant background notwithstanding, the boy from deep
within the hills of China's south-western Guangxi
province has had a remarkable career.
He was only 48 when he became China's Ambassador to
Nepal - young by Chinese standards. He then headed the
Asian department in the Chinese Foreign Ministry for
two years before his tour here.
Impeccable manners are the veneer over a substantial
amount of passion and steel, as the Ambassador
astutely defends China's geostrategic positions and
fields wide-ranging questions with finesse and
insight.
These range from Sino-Singapore relations, which
crossed the 10th-anniversary mark in October, to
China's often turbulent relations with the United
States.
A serious man whose work is his life, Ambassador Zhang
says he feels most alive when presenting his
credentials to foreign heads of state: 'That is when I
feel a sharp sense of mission, the weight of my
country and people on my shoulders, and the honour of
it all.'
He does not dwell on the hardship in his youth or the
hurdles a young farmer boy must have braved before he
could, at 18, leave the hills for the prestigious
Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages in the capital,
a stint which changed his life for good.
Nor does he begrudge the year spent in hard labour
after he graduated from university as a Thai
specialist, when his entire class was sent to Hubei
province to clear wastelands and plant crops, by hand,
as Chairman Mao Zedong had dictated.
'Eating bitterness' at an early age is not necessarily
a bad thing, he says, for it has helped temper him.
'Life is like climbing a mountain - the hills along
the way prepare you for the peak,' he muses.
Then he quotes Tang dynasty poet Du Fu's famous
verses: 'As you reach the peak of Taishan, all other
peaks are dwarved in comparison.'
His wife, Madam Tang Lizhen, is a colleague from the
foreign service. They have a 20-year-old son who is
studying economics and foreign languages at Beijing
University.
Straits Times, 2002 |
狗仔卡
发表于 2008-7-31 02:24:29
变色卡
抢沙发
发表于 2008-9-20 14:31:52