A Senior Chinese Leader Reports
Dear Harvey,
I am writing to you about our valuable experiences at the East Asian Pre-World-Conference Conference in Japan and our thinking about near-future plans.
You may have learned that altogether we had seven people from Beijing who attended the conference, including a non-RCer who is the supervisor of a hotline and who is interested in RC.
For myself, my self-estimation and also the estimation of me from others were two of the most important events. To prepare the self-estimation, I seriously thought over what I had achieved in these four years and what I did not do well and should improve. I had a good discussion on these issues with Chen Pingjun who has been supporting me all these years and who has helped me and contributed to our RC Community tremendously. I also told our group in advance that the next day I would be doing self-estimation and would like them to think over and give their estimation of me. Thus they all had enough time to consider what they wanted to say.
Besides the Chinese group, Yuho and Tim also gave their estimation. What Yuho said I not only took as coming from an old acquaintance but as from one leader to another leader, which is very precious. What she said was very touching. What Tim said was full of concern, understanding, and encouragement and was very enlightening to me. Shiom was at that time busy doing the translations, but after I returned to China I got an e-mail from her saying, "I loved your self-estimation. It was so moving I could not help crying. I think all the Japanese people were moved as well, and they were talking about how wonderful it was after the Conference." This unexpected e-mail conveyed the love and concern of a sister Community to us, and it gave me courage to continue my leadership in RC and do better.
The whole Chinese group was doing very well in general. We all tried our best to take every chance to learn from each other, practice, and improve our Co-Counseling, despite the language barriers. (English was supposed to be used to help communication between the Chinese and the Japanese, but on many occasions we did Co-Counseling without understanding each other's language.) To help ourselves make best use of the conference, we arranged a special gather-together for ourselves every afternoon during the break time, to take turns sharing our new experiences and getting support from each other. This proved to be quite effective in enabling us to support each other and make the conference experiences more rewarding to everyone.
I would say the conference was a great success. It was very well arranged. I think those who came from the Philippines, China, and the United States all felt happy to have the chance to be closer to and have better understanding of each other.
Our group was much inspired by the conference. On May 24 we spent a half-day together exchanging our experiences and impressions and putting forward our near-future plans.
The ideas put forward are as follows:
- Continue and try to expand RC practice among family members and relatives. This means people who are close to us and well known to us, some of whom might not have even given notice to RC yet;
- Outreach to one or two classes in college and practice RC among the students;
- Give classes to students and teachers who have shown an interest in RC;
- Introduce RC in a summer school for children which is run by the hotline in which Chen Xiangming is involved.
- Resume publishing of our Chinese newsletter which will carry translations from RC literature and articles by ourselves.
As the person in charge here, I will make efforts to lead better, to see to it that things keep going and keep going well, and to see that our plans are carried out. I will also be in charge of our newsletter and other translations.
As you know, one of the most important events this year will be Hong Kong's return to China. After returning from Japan, Chen Pingjun was informed by her office that she was chosen to be sent to Hong Kong to help launch a Hong Kong edition of the newspaper she works for. So she is likely to leave soon for Hong Kong. It is a pity she won't be here for some time, but we will keep in touch, and with the help of others I think I can manage.
Li Mei Ge
Beijing,
China