Bridge Builders:
Jerry Grey and Ann Liang

Grey has borne witness to history, watching first-hand the phenomenal change in China over the past couple of decades. And typically for a traveler, it was a home comfort that underlined the difference and the distance – and then the change. 

"When I first came here, it was almost impossible, for example, to get a coffee – and I'm a coffee addict," he recalls. "There was very little in the way of British products, very little that reminded me of home. That's all changed now – pretty much everything that I used to miss I can now find here."

Grey has made his home in Zhongshan, a city of 3 million on the west of the Pearl River delta opposite Hong Kong. But like his father, his work has taken him to dozens of different cities, albeit within China. 

He has spent a month at a time training colleagues in Beijing, the Inner Mongolian capital Hohhot and the north-eastern city of Harbin, not far from Pyongyang and Vladivostok; subsequently, he became an examiner for the British Council, "and that meant I traveled to dozens of different cities, quite often two or three, sometimes even four cities in one week." 

However, he has always been glad to return to Zhongshan – "It's a really nice place to come back to, and I always consider this as home" – and not because it has become some sort of Little England.  

"I've never really met more than half a dozen British people here," he reveals. "There's a lot of foreigners – a lot of Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders – but in terms of British, it's a small community. I'm pretty sure we all know each other, or we know of each other."

He has also got to know the culture – through both experience and education. After starting as a teacher, he set up in business running a language center and coffee shop – "remember, I couldn't find coffee" – before becoming a training manager for a British company. 

"The company had some serious problems, in that they didn't really understand the cultural difference between the workplace psychology of Chinese employees and the management philosophy of Western managers," he explains. "So I did a Master's degree in cross-cultural change management, and that helped me to understand a lot more about the environment that I'm living and working in."

As his working life has wound down – "I've pretty much retired from full time work now. I just do some writing and some editing" – Grey has found an outlet in blogging, especially since lockdown. 

"From 2015 to 2020, my Twitter site had two followers," he laughs. "Because we had some experience of cycling across China, I decided that I would focus on that and I started posting photographs and stories linked to the photographs. Then I started writing articles about it, because people kept asking for more and more information."

@Jerry_grey2002 now has 67,500 followers – "and it all really started because we had nothing to do," he admits. "We were locked down. And I thought, 'Well, I'll share my experiences of China.'"

Fundraising

This labor of love also has its financial rewards – not for Grey, but for charity. From 2005, through sponsored cycles, walks and charity events, Grey and his wife Ann Liang have raised around 3 million yuan, roughly $450,000.

Their fundraising began almost by accident. In 2005, he and his wife Ann Liang held a big Christmas party: "We didn't want to be out of pocket, but we didn't want to make a profit," he explains. They charged a cover fee "but if we made money, we would donate it to charity" – and ended up giving around 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) to volunteer youth associations. They haven't really stopped since. 

"We're basically fundraisers rather than an organized charity," he says. "Here in Zhongshan, we used to try and help people who were poor," but "we found that the government are doing that pretty well now anyway." 

"We tend to focus more on disabilities and helping disabilities to become more assimilated in the community. So in 2014, when I decided to do this bike ride, I thought it might be an idea to link the two together. And it created a bit of publicity, generated a lot of interest."

Now the couple had a benevolent hobby: long-distance endurance fundraising. The year after, Liang raised even more money than her husband had, with her own long-distance journey – this time on foot. With American woman Darrah Blackwater for company, Liang spent four and a half months walking 2,500 kilometers from Zhongshan to Beijing via Nanjing. 

The route had special meaning for Liang, and not just as a Zhongshan native. Sun Yat-sen, a revered statesman known as the Father of the Nation and the Forerunner of the Revolution, was born in Zhongshan, died in Beijing and is buried in Nanjing, roughly halfway in between. As Liang says, "He started where we started, finished the Qing Dynasty where we finished, and rests where we rested."

Again, it was both an adventure and an exercise in mindfulness. "We mostly stayed in cheap hotels," she recalls. "We camped a few times in the mountains because the maps took us to mountain areas."

"When you're traveling on foot or by bike, you can't use the freeways, of course," chips in Grey. "So the maps take you to some very, very interesting places."

"But safe, quite safe," insists Liang. "We didn't meet any dangerous situations, not at all."

This fundraising dynamic duo have since had lots of adventures, and it's something Grey couldn't have imagined when he first came to China for what was supposed to be a one-off contract. 

First, he fell in love with Zhongshan; deciding he wanted to stay in the city, he sought employment at a local language center, but he found much more than just a job. The manager was Ann Liang, and would become his wife. 

"Jerry came to our school to look for a job," Liang recalls, "and he became our teacher. And slowly we became boyfriend and girlfriend."

She was taken aback by her new boyfriend's forthrightness, which she put down to a cultural difference: "I found that a Western man is more direct to express their feelings, their love. Chinese people are more shy, but foreigners find it easy to say 'I love you' when they really feel the love."

"The great thing about Ann is that she's very open-minded," says Grey. "She comes from a very open-minded family, and they didn't have a problem with a foreigner being in the family – as long as I wasn't a criminal…."

Grey says her caring guidance has also helped him assimilate more easily: "There are some things that I will say that Ann will remind me that's culturally not the right thing to do," he says. "She's very good at pointing this out in a way that doesn't make me feel stupid. 

"We're obviously from different cultures, but because both of us have traveled widely, both of us have experience of the other culture. I don't think it's such a broad difference – we were comfortable with each other's cultures before we met."

The two dovetail neatly in their charity work – Liang says "Jerry's job is to promote our charity to the foreign community, and my job is more like event planning" – and it seemed an obvious step to cycle together. 

"When I rode from Zhongshan to Urumqi," recalls Grey of that 2014 journey, "I had a feeling that I hadn't completed the journey and I wanted to ride from Urumqi back to Zhongshan." Liang's encouragement was bounced back on her by her husband: "'If I'm going to do it, let's do it together. So we got another bike….'"

Thus it was that in 2019, the couple and an Australian friend flew out to Xinjiang and rode back, another 4,300 kilometers and raising another 200,000 yuan – something like $30,000. But it wasn't easy.

"I had to teach Ann how to ride properly," laughs Grey. "She rides in a very Chinese way – the seat is very low, the knees don't get the full stretch. And long distance, it's not the same as riding to the market place or to school or to work. She wasn't very good at starting off or stopping, because she's used to just stepping through the bike, and we had to learn to ride a different style."

Zhongshan TV followed the journey on a daily basis. "They'd call me every afternoon and say, 'Where are you now? How far have you gone?' And sometimes it was great – 'We're just having a rest day and I'm eating a bowl of noodles' – and other days it'd be 'I'll call you back because we're climbing a mountain right now.'"

En route, they also encountered misunderstanding from locals. "A lot of people think Ann is my translator, not my wife," says Grey. "They think she's an employee – 'Why are you doing this for the foreigner?'"

But some chance meetings in rural China can be more joyous. "If you stop anywhere at school time," says Grey, you'll be surrounded by a huge group of children. "It's 'Wow, look – a foreigner!' They don't see many there."

This cross-cultural couple admire much about each other's backgrounds… but not quite everything. 

Having lived there for most of this century, Grey clearly finds China fascinating. "There's what they call intangible culture, which is everywhere. One of the things I like is yum cha. It's going out for breakfast, drinking tea and choosing what foods you like. The language is incredibly interesting and complex and I'm learning. I'm not very good at Chinese, but I learn more every day."

Liang has also experienced a lot of British culture. While Grey's father still lives in the northeast of England, his mother ended her days living in Wales, so family trips would criss-cross the island – especially as the couple would take the opportunity to visit Scotland, too: "Ann's father likes whisky, so we took him to the Highlands for some," explains Grey, "so there's not much of the UK we haven't seen really."

Asked what she likes about British culture, Liang cites the architecture and the inherent politeness of the people – but there is a side that confuses her: the liberal usage of the word "love" with strangers. 

"Everyone says 'What do you want, love?' or 'Hot or cold, love?' in a coffee shop," she muses. "It's easy to call someone 'love' you don't know at all. For Chinese, we will not easily say 'love,' but to them it's just like 'Hi'."

And there is one beloved national dish that she doesn't like: fish and chips. "Definitely not," she insists, although "I like steak and mashed potatoes."

Grey stocks up on pies to remind him of the old country, but he questions what British cuisine actually is. 

"Pork pies, things like that – they're not exactly world beating cuisines," he says. "British people enjoy alternate food – Chinese restaurants, Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, they're huge in the UK. I can't remember ever going to a 'British restaurant' apart from the fish and chip shop."

But there is a British food trope that he misses in its absence. "One thing I do miss about the UK – and I lived in Australia as well, and I missed it there too – is the culture of being able to go for a pub lunch, a plowman's lunch," he says. "The British will know exactly what I'm talking about – it's cheese and pickles and bread. 

"That's probably one of the very few things about English culture that I'd say 'I wish I could do that.' I wish I could just go to the pub, sit by the river in the garden and have a plowman's lunch. And the other thing is indulging myself with a cup of coffee and the Sunday newspaper. You can't do that here either."

However, the couple have come to a domestic comestibles arrangement which brings the West to Zhongshan every morning. 

"I do English breakfasts all the time, we have an omelet almost every morning and it's very big on coffee," smiles Grey. "So it's not exactly English culture, but it's Western culture."

Grey's blogging has attracted attention not just for the traveling and fundraising. In a time when many Western attitudes towards China have degraded from distance to distrust, he has found himself unexpectedly cast as something of a defender of his adopted country: the Westerner in China trying to balance negativity, overcome suspicion and counteract narrow-mindedness. 

"I think China has done incredibly good things with poverty alleviation; crime is almost non-existent; the health of Chinese people is better than before – in every metric that we measure, China is better than it used to be," he says. "There is nothing in China that is worse than it used to be. Yet outside of China, the opposite is true. It's getting harder to find a good job. It's getting harder to have a stable and secure income. It's getting harder to have health care."

Grey has noted a decline in the global discourse. "Relationships between Western countries and China have deteriorated, particularly in the last five to 10 years. The relationship between the UK and China is not as bad as the relationship between, say, America and Australia to China. 

"But certainly it's a different relationship now. I remember Xi Jinping going to visit the UK and drinking beer with the Prime Minister – it was the golden age of relationships between China and the UK, and since then things have deteriorated."

Indeed, the attitude from UK politicians has slid sharply, with Boris Johnson's government restricting the role of market leader Huawei in creating telecoms infrastructure, and leadership candidate Rishi Sunak recently claiming that "China and the Chinese Communist Party represent the largest threat to Britain and the world's security and prosperity this century." Such Sinophobic attitudes are increasingly reflected on the internet. 

"I'm seeing examples of China hate online, which is surprising to me," Grey continues. "People will often say 'I love the Chinese people, but I hate the government,' and I don't think it's possible to separate them. The government are the people, the people are the government: It's the People's Republic of China. And I think people don't realize that. 

"The opinion in the West is that many Chinese people are oppressed and would like to be rescued. And I find that incredible because this is the freest, easiest-going country that I've lived in – and I've lived in several and traveled to many more. It's very, very free and easy."

Liang reflects on the first time she went to the UK, in 2012, and felt overawed: "They are hen qiang, a very strong country, much stronger than China before," she says, recalling how she felt "nervous and not confident enough." That's changed now, and she thinks her attitude is typical of her compatriots.

"Now I think more Chinese people will think the country is stronger now, and has the power to say no to other countries when they have unfair treatment to China," she says. "As the country gets stronger, people who live in the country also feel we don't have to fear other people, we don't have to fear foreigners."

Grey agrees, saying that China has "come of age." 

"When I first came to China there was a very obvious envy of foreign countries. People would say to me, 'Why do you live in China? You could live in Australia or the UK and it's so much better there.' And I'd say to them, 'Not really,' but they hadn't realized that. Now I think they have.

"So many Chinese people go out every year – 100 million people before COVID-19, visiting other countries, and then coming back and saying the same as Ann: 'It's not what we thought it was out there, we're doing all right here.' 

"And they're realizing that China is way ahead in patent applications, in technology, in communications. It is very, very much a global power, and it is helping poorer countries do exactly the same as they do inside their own country. They're going to Africa and helping poorer countries. And now Chinese people are realizing that and saying 'We're the important players.'"

Grey's many connections in his adopted homeland allow him to fact-check some of the more outlandish online opinions, often expressed quite speculatively.

"I love it when people tell me that 'Chinese people think this' – I'll say to Ann, 'Do you think this?' And she says 'No. Why did you say that?' 'Somebody just told me on Twitter that you think this.' I'll mix my sources, I'll ask people from different generations and different industries. And invariably, it's different to what someone in the UK or in Australia or America and has never been to China thinks."

It's a theme he returns to when asked how to increase understanding – to build bridges – between the UK and China: "Read critically," he insists. "It's no good looking at a newspaper article and saying 'This must be true.' For every story you're reading about China, find out the source.

"When I was teaching, I used to tell my students to read Global Times and People's Daily and China Daily, if you're practicing your English reading, because they do have good articles. Then go to CNN, Fox, BBC and look for the same story and try and find the differences between those two stories. Now, which one do you believe?

"Much of the stories that we read about China are written by people reading things written by people who haven't been to China, or have been here for 10 days or 20 days on holidays."

Grey actively embraces his new position as a Western voice embedded in Chinese culture and active on social media. "If anybody has a question on China, I'm happy to answer it. If someone just says, 'You're a liar,' I'm not interested in trying to educate that person. But if anybody has a question, I'm happy to answer it. 

"And that's what I think people need to do. If you want to find out what's happening in China, ask people who are in China, not people who used to be in China, because China has changed so much – poverty alleviation, rural revitalization, incredible infrastructure. 

"Anyone who was here in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s has a completely wrong impression of China. They don't understand China – the China they knew is not the China of today. And that's the most important thing that I can put across. If you are an 'expert' on China, you really need to be in China."

Liang agrees, with an open invitation: "People who don't believe pro-China articles and videos, they can bring their doubts, their questions and come to China and have a look."

Such contact can help to end misunderstandings great and small. Liang recalls a story from when Grey first arrived in China, back in 2004, for what he mistakenly thought would be just a single year. 

"He'd read about China in Australia before he came, and he thought 'I need to bring toothpaste, shower gel…'"

"I brought two bottles of shampoo, two bottles of shower gel, two big tubes of toothpaste, because I thought I might need to buy them and I wouldn't be able to get them in China," continues Grey. But when he arrived, "I lived above a supermarket, a big supermarket. I paid excess luggage to carry the stuff here, and I could have got it downstairs!"