Twelve foreigners who have made China their home win recognition for their exceptional contributions. Liu Zhihua reports
Expatriates have long been a dynamic force in Chinese society. Many have helped improve Chinese lives with their contributions in business, education, medical care, conservation, and disaster relief. Tianjin TV's bilingual documentary program, China Right There, highlights the lives of foreigners who have been living here since the founding of New China in 1949.
Now, 12 of those who call China their home have won the You Bring Charm to China award, for their exceptional efforts to advance the nation's development.
The awards were given on Sept 20 at 21st Century Theater, hosted by Tianjin Television and Phoenix Television, and co-sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and several prominent Chinese media groups.
We profile the winners here.
Jill Robinson, 50, from Britain, founder and CEO of Animals Asia Foundation
Robinson has been working for nearly 20 years to stop the extraction of bile from moon bears for use in traditional medicine.
She began working for the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Hong Kong in the mid-1980s. A business trip to a bear farm in the mainland in 1993 changed her life.
The sight of living, breathing bears imprisoned in rows of tiny wire cages, and tortured by wounds and infections made her cry, and she vowed that one day she would be back to set them free.
Robinson researched the way the bile was used and found that bear bile could easily be replaced by herbs or synthetic alternatives, considered just as effective by eminent traditional medical practitioners.
In 1998, she set up the Asia Animals Foundation. In July 2000, the foundation signed an agreement to free 500 farmed moon bears with the relevant authorities in Beijing and Sichuan. In 2002, the Moon Bear Rescue Center was established in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, giving the bears everything they were denied on the farms: health, freedom and happiness.
Now, in terms of area, bear farms have been phased out of two-thirds of China. "As much as we rescue them, they rescue us. These bears rescue us every single day and they teach us to be better people," Robinson says.
George Beals Schaller, 73, from the United States, a naturalist, conservationist and author
Schaller has studied wildlife in Asia, Africa and South America for more than 50 years, and has helped save some of the most famous creatures on the planet, including the giant panda and the rare Tibetan antelope, or chiru.
Schaller began his study of the giant panda in Wolong, Sichuan, in 1980 and became one of the first Westerners permitted into China for research. Together with his Chinese colleagues, he zeroed in on the main threats to the survival of giant pandas and other wildlife - poaching, poor forestry management and destruction of habitat.
Thanks to his research efforts, the panda population in the wild has increased by 45 percent.
In 1984, Schaller went to Chang Tang in the Tibet autonomous region, and worked on researching the chiru, whose population was declining rapidly owing to hunting for their exotic wool.
On his advice, the Chang Tang Nature Reserve was established. Better enforcement of conservation measures combined with a growing wildlife protection ethic in local communities has led to an increase in the numbers of the chiru.
Over the past 30 years, Schaller has also brought the ecological systems of the remote northern and western areas of China, to the attention of the world through his books and articles.
Professor Lu Zhi of Peking University received the award on behalf of Dr Schaller, who was in the wild conducting his research. |