Bridge Builders:
Blair Sugarman
The man exploring different cultures to make a brighter world
'I always viewed languages as an opportunity to break out'
For some Bridge Builders – as with the population at large – it can seem that a destiny is written in the stars, or perhaps more rationally the genes and environment. Many of us follow a trail blazed by our parents or theirs, following in the family business or at least taking up their hobbies and interests.
It's not always that way, though, and we all have the opportunity to strike out in a new direction. So it was for Blair Sugarman, born in 1989 and growing up in the north London suburbs but forever looking outwards at the world beyond.
"From a very young age, I loved studying languages," he says. "I always viewed languages as the opportunity to break out of this small space where I grew up. My parents unfortunately didn't speak any foreign languages, so I had to learn."
He's quick to point out that "my childhood was a very happy one, I grew up in a very warm family," and the young Sugarman was supported in his burgeoning interests.
"As I got into my teens and went through to high school, I started with Russian and French. And from 2007 to 2011, I studied at Edinburgh University, where I majored in Chinese and Russian studies."
Languages were no passing teenage fad. Taking a "deep dive" into another culture, he says, was "something really exciting, something I really enjoyed doing."
As it turned out, it would do more than excite him. It would propel him through a door to a life on the other side of the planet.
Blair Sugarman as a child. /Sugarman
Blair Sugarman as a child. /Sugarman
Finding China
'You're in a completely different environment, but you just go with the flow and you enjoy it'
Understandably, as part of the university course, students were expected "to go to study and experience the environment." But while most of his fellow students tended to head to China's two biggest cities Beijing and Shanghai, Sugarman deliberately swerved these megacities for somewhere very different.
"I chose Dalian – a lot of my friends wanted to experience big cities, but I decided to go somewhere a bit smaller, where there were less foreigners, to learn Chinese faster," he explains.
Dalian is hardly a backwater; steeped in history, the port city – on the Yellow Sea separating China from the Korean Peninsula – has a population approaching 6 million, making it a similar size to Barcelona, St Petersburg, Washington DC and Johannesburg. But Sugarman's purpose rings clear: he had come as a student, not a tourist.
Arriving in 2009, he studied "very hard" at a local university in listening, reading, speaking and writing Chinese, "hopefully skills that I've taken with me today, although I think my writing is probably a lot worse than it used to be..."
What also helped was embedding himself in the culture. "I made a lot of friends and I lived with a Chinese family, which was incredible for my Chinese progress," he says. "You're in a completely different environment, but you just go with the flow and you enjoy it. The experience was amazing.
"I think I put on weight when I was there, I ate so much good food. I had a good time with the family that I was living with. I met a lot of very friendly people, I ate a lot of incredible food and I learned a fascinating language. So everything was very new. It was like experiencing a new life."
Into work
Sugarman had opened the door to a new world. And although he returned home after a year to complete his degree course, and then started to work in the UK, it was only a matter of time before he returned.
Straight from university, Sugarman went into international brand development, helping women's fashion brand Red or Dead and football manufacturer Mitre create roadmaps into the Chinese market. Some of this work involved traveling back to China with business delegations, helping with orientation and negotiations – in other words, building bridges.
In 2013, sportswear company Speedo International hired Sugarman and by the end of the year he was based in China. His work came naturally to him – "digital marketing, things like Weibo and WeChat that I had been using a very long time since I started studying Chinese" – and he was back in the country he adored… but not necessarily the city he'd have chosen.
"I'd originally wanted to go to Shanghai with the company, because that was the place that I had been to many times," he recalls. "I'd never been to Hong Kong, but they sent me to Hong Kong… and I fell in love with it as well."
The face of a culture
'A Bright World' put Sugarman on TV. /CGTN
'A Bright World' put Sugarman on TV. /CGTN
Not everybody would look at a summit meeting of world leaders and think "This format is ripe for a humorous TV show." But that was the idea behind the TV show Non-Summit, which delighted the Republic of Korea by inviting foreigners living in the country to discuss cultural issues and solve problems through discussion and knowledge-sharing.
It was such a hit that the format was adapted in several countries – and when the Chinese version A Bright World appeared in 2015, the creators asked Sugarman to participate.
"They said, 'As an English person, you'll have the opportunity to share some culture and also learn things about other countries.' And I thought, 'Sounds interesting…'"
He was right. "The idea was to have foreigners from 11 countries come together to share their views and the background of their culture," he explains. "I represented the UK, we had a great guy from Italy, a guy from the U.S., Iran, Canada, Thailand, Germany – lots of different people."
'Everyone has an opinion. It might be right or wrong, but it's not for you to decide'
In each episode, into this mix was thrown a Chinese guest and a topic. "For example, shopping online – How did it work in our countries? What did we buy? What did we like to look at online? It was really interesting, a great way to meet people and learn about their cultures."
The learning was a constant reward, and gave Sugarman an ethos he retains to this day. "One of the things that the show taught me about building bridges between cultures was that you have to keep an open mind," he says. "They all had fascinating stories to tell about that culture – not just food, but their upbringings, the stories that are really interesting to hear from different people's perspectives.
"Sometimes you have to walk a mile in another person's shoes, as we say in the UK. That means considering multiple points of view before making up your own mind – and things like that are extremely important. It's something I did on the TV show, it's something I've tried to do in my career – everyone has an opinion and it might be right or it might be wrong, but it's not for you to decide."
Exploring another avenue
'Photos give people the chance to experience a place they've never been'
Before he turned 30, Sugarman had literally come a long way: Halfway around the globe; still gainfully employed in marketing; and with hundreds of thousands of followers enjoying his social media content. He treated himself to taking 2018 off – and in doing so, created the room for another creative outlet.
"I started to think a bit more about my passion, which is photography," he says. "In 2018, I'd worked in China for eight or nine years, and I wanted a bit of a break to go traveling. So I picked up a camera and I thought, 'I'm going to go to as many countries as possible and I'm going to take as many photos as possible.'"
However, sometimes criss-crossing the globe will only make us realize that what we left behind is what we wish to return to – or as Frank Sinatra observed, while it's nice to go traveling, it's so much nicer to come home.
Sugarman certainly enjoyed his sabbatical, but he's also grateful that his new adopted hometown of Hong Kong – the one he hadn't originally wanted to be in – also offers superb opportunities for the alert lensman.
"I think Hong Kong has probably the best skyline in the world," he says, with the pride of the local. "Standing on the Kowloon side or on Hong Kong Island, looking across either way to see the different buildings lighting up, is absolutely amazing.
"The streets of Hong Kong are endlessly fascinating. They offer an incredible mix of people, cultures, food, and there is so much to see and so much to do – and so much to offer from a photography perspective. I like the shadows, I like the people, I like the daily life. I love taking photos of taxis and trams, that are very distinctive in Hong Kong."
The human touch
However, while Sugarman loves to document the built environment, his favorite subject is the people who live in it. The boy who loved language has grown up to watch it happening all around him.
"Watching people communicate, watching people interact, and going about their daily lives – it really is completely fascinating and I love doing it, every single day."
But what is his own photography trying to communicate? "It depends on the style," he says. "I'm a multidisciplinary photographer, so I take a lot of different styles – I do aerial, I do street, I do whatever I enjoy really.
"But for certain things like street photography in Hong Kong, I'm trying to promote a little bit of insight into the way that people live their lives, the way that people associate with one another, communicate with each other on a daily basis. And that's something that I've tried to capture in my very intimate street shots."
This intimate experience can then transform into something educational and inspirational.
"The benefit of photos is that they give people the chance to experience a place they've never been, or observe something they've never seen. Through photos, I like to explain where I live and what I see.
And the videos serve as a complement to that, where I explain my process, why I love taking the photos, what I love taking photos of, and why I enjoy it."
Hong Kong from above. /Sugarman
Hong Kong from above. /Sugarman
"One of my all-time favorite photographs that I've taken was of a small rice shop in Hong Kong, and the owner sitting in the middle of bags of rice. The idea was to capture the environment, the fact that this man has been operating this rice shop for probably 40 years, maybe longer."
"This was for a photoshoot we did for a campaign for a big hotel chain that wanted to get people in touch with the local life in Hong Kong. And this gentleman carrying this huge bag of rice is about 80 years old, and having the opportunity to take photos and interact with him was absolutely amazing."
"I took hundreds and hundreds of photos. There's also a couple more of him sitting in the shop where you have the background and the context as well, so you can kind of get a feel for the way that he works, the way he lives, where he's been, what he does and his attitude towards life."
Similarities and differences
Chinese socializing in Hong Kong. /Sugarman
Chinese socializing in Hong Kong. /Sugarman
As a British expatriate who's spent a decade in China, Sugarman is well-placed to discuss the cultures' similarities and differences. He saw one difference as soon as he landed.
"There was a huge difference in food," he says, zeroing in on a discrepancy noted by many Bridge Builders. "The culture revolved around food, the way that people ate, gathered together, talked, laughed, drank. It was all quite new and amazing.
"Also there is a big cultural emphasis on family, something that I felt when I went to take part in Chinese New Year celebrations or celebrations of Chinese festivals – the cultural importance was really interesting."
Is there anything he misses about UK culture? "Surprisingly, the food I grew up eating – I have a really big sweet tooth," he smiles. "A lot of UK sweets like Skittles, lemon sherbets, Refreshers – that's something that you can't necessarily buy out here.
"As a photographer I also miss certain things about the London scenery that a lot of people embody. You see people with bowler hats and umbrellas – that's something that's very central London. That's one of the things that I really miss as well."
Like many a settler, he has also found his new home is surprisingly various: "One of the things that I find most curious about Chinese culture is that the culture can differ depending on which region you go to. If you go to the north east where I was in Dalian, you'll find that the people, the food, the dress, the language, everything is completely different. If you were to go to Chongqing, the food is different, the people are different.
"But no matter where you go, I also find that there's a lot of similarities – the food is always delicious, the people are friendly, and you'll generally have a good time."
He also thinks China has a lot in common with the UK. "The emphasis on community is quite similar. The area that I was living in Dalian was a very warm, close-knit community – in the same way the UK community that I grew up in was good as well.
"Also, the emphasis on education. My parents definitely emphasize the importance of education, and when I was in China, they would make sure that I studied very thoroughly every day."
Cultural clues
When we study so dedicatedly, we can find things we love forever after. As a student, Sugarman read a book of Chinese poetry – helpfully called "The poetry you should read in your lifetime" – and can still recite some now.
"I studied poetry, I studied 成语 (idioms), I studied an incredible variety of language that really opened a window into the culture," he says. "For me, 唐诗宋词 (poetry from the Tang and Song dynasty) was something that I would read in my spare time and I would translate my own versions from Chinese to English. I realized that if you could understand the poetry, it also enabled you to understand other things in Chinese culture."
He explains his point with a quick example. "When China invented the incredibly fast magnetic trains, in the newspaper there was a sentence that said 怎一个快字了得 – 'the word fast is not adequate to convey its speed'. That is a poem – the sentence comes from 李清照 (Li Qingzhao)."
Li lived from 1084 to the mid-1150s, and her original line was 怎一个愁字了得 – "the word frustration is not adequate to convey my sorrowful mood." When Sugarman recognized the phrase, it transformed the thought from a breathless journalistic description into a knowing reference to one of China's most beloved poets, linking the astonishing progress of modernity to China's millennia-old cultural tradition.
"If you haven't seen it, if you don't know that sentence, then you don't necessarily understand the meaning of what it's trying to imply," says Sugarman. "So for me, stuff like that is absolutely fascinating. Reading poetry is something that I still enjoy doing today – so much of Chinese culture is in the language."
Building bridges
'Sharing culture keeps people open-minded'
Having enjoyed the benefits of British and Chinese culture, Sugarman is keen that others might do the same – if they can go into it with the right attitude.
"Whenever I think back over my time in China as a British person, I think that there was always so much to learn – not just from teachers at university, but also from the people that I surrounded myself with when I was living in China. And it involved keeping an open mind.
"You have to accept that there are differences, and then that way you can kind of take things on board and continue to develop and grow. So for China and the UK, it's the same. Both sides need to realize that there is a lot to learn from one another, and then they can continue to collaborate and cooperate moving forwards."
Open-mindedness remains the lodestar in Sugarman's worldview.
"It's important to build bridges between China and the UK because the two countries have a lot to learn about each other," he says. "Sharing culture keeps people open-minded, and you have to be open-minded to share culture as well.
"When I went out to Dalian to study Chinese, I went with no idea about how much I didn't know. And it was only when I got to China that I understood a bit more about the way that people live their lives.
"And I think that's the same the other way around. I would encourage people to visit the UK, to experience the culture and realize just how much the two countries have to learn about one another."
Times of change
He is aware that we are in a curious time of change, and change which is not always positive.
"Attitudes towards Chinese people outside of China have changed, both for better and for worse. For better, because of Chinese tech innovation: Tech is a huge area where China is doing incredible work.
"For worse, there is a tendency because of COVID-19 to point the finger at people, and that is obviously wrong and unfair. Unfortunately, people do tend to attach some negativity towards Chinese people, wrongly so. So I hope that that's something that changes and the relationships between everyone continues to improve."
For those who follow him across the bridge, there is much to benefit from.
"The scenery is beautiful, the food is delicious, the cities are developed and you can have a great time no matter where you go – and depending on where you go, your experience will be completely different. So I would encourage people to visit as many places as possible, communicate with as many people as possible, and you'll definitely have a good time.
"I've really loved living in China because there is so much to learn here. Depending on who you meet, where you go, you'll find that every experience differs completely and you will thoroughly enjoy it. I know I have."
Hong Kong street. /Sugarman
Hong Kong street. /Sugarman
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Credits
Chief Editor Guo Chun
Editor Elizabeth Mearns
Writer Gary Parkinson
Producer Elizabeth Mearns, Yubin Du
Video Editor Jeong-One Park
