Eric's Beijing Diary

Had dinner with Claire last night. She is moving to beautiful Xiamen. Actually, her company is sending her there. Xiamen is, and always has been, a center of trade, and it is not surprising that both Dell and Kodak have huge installations there. Xiamen, known in the West as "Amoy," is interesting historically, because it figures so prominently as one of the treaty ports for international trade established by the Treaty of Nanking after the Opium War. In those days, The international community was established on Gulang Yu, an island just off the coast of Xiamen (which is itself an island). The remnants of this community are still present on Gulang Yu, and the island is a very pretty retreat on a cool summer evening. I won't say more about it, because I wrote it up last year on this blog (see October 27-28, 2005).

I told Claire to go to Gulang Yu and climb the rock to look out over Xiamen Bay and see the beautiful scenery. She said, "I don't want to see the scenery, I want to work hard." The lady is destined for success. You talk about work ethic, she personifies it. But she is also a candidate for burn-out. We are not farm animals. We are human beings created in the Image of God. We will all be more fit to work for God if we take time to smell the roses. Hard to find a better place to do it than Xiamen.