ShenzhenToastmastersClub

Does everything need to be in its place?

The poster asked the question in plain words. Putting things back, keeping a day on plan: does that bring calm? What happens when someone moves your things, or changes the plan? Christy set Sense of Order as the theme and brought four Table Topics prompts with her: what you used to worry about and have learned to let go of; what helps you find calm when life gets chaotic; which source of chaos you would remove if you could; and whether you are a planner or prefer to go with the flow.

The week leading up to Tuesday did not stay in place. Stella gave up her speech slot for a mix of reasons. The night before the meeting, Tao told the officers that work had crushed him and he would not make it. He apologised to Jason that there would be no driver, and joked that missing the evaluation mattered less. Jason told him to take care of himself first. Camellia was out the same night on overtime. Mini still opened and closed the evening as Meeting Manager and General Evaluator. Danny hosted. Christy kept the theme that had asked whether everything needs its place.

Water, before November

Jason opened the prepared speeches with Safeties, listed as Pathway 2.5 with an objective of stories sharing. Rebecca followed with Compassion, her Visionary Communication Level 2 project.

Then the agenda made room for a different shape: a prepared speech, then questions from the room on what he had just said. The title was Prove Your Humanity in Single Word: Water. It was a rehearsal for a contest coming in November. Afterwards he wrote that he was glad to see the club again and thanked everyone for the stage. Stella answered that his visit had made the room feel honored.

The guest who asked ChatGPT

A guest named Jackson spent much of the evening behind the camera. Stella posted his photographs to the meeting group the same night, thanked him by name for catching so many moments, and said she looked forward to seeing him next Tuesday. He replied that it had been a wonderful experience, and wished everyone a good night.

The next afternoon the Foodie chat filled in how he had found the door. Cecilia said he had just returned from Canada, asked ChatGPT on his second day in Shenzhen, and was pointed to Toastmasters. Andy had already added him on WeChat and noted that he had been in Toastmasters in Canada too. Tao wrote that for a stretch ChatGPT had sent the club more traffic than the website, and that Toastmasters is often a newcomer’s first stop in the city.

Thank you to Jackson for the photographs that reached the group chat that night.

A Friday full of apples

On Friday morning, Tao posted the sign-up for meeting #1043. The speakers had names; the supporting roles had apples. Nearly thirteen hours later, the apples were still there.

Then the names began to appear. Danny asked Tao to choose a role for him and became General Evaluator. Jason agreed to host. Han signed up as SAA and checked what the job involved: arranging the room, opening with a warm-up, and introducing the meeting rules. By Tuesday, those small exchanges had become an evening together.

It was a fitting week for the Meeting Manager to give a speech called MM 101.

Prepared speeches

Mini gave From Awkward Monologue to a Heart-to-heart Class, a project on using vocal variety or body language to enhance delivery. Her delivery was as engaging as ever, and she won Best Prepared Speaker. Later that night, Anna encouraged her to enter a contest. Mini’s reply the next morning was rather less confident, but the invitation was there.

Sammi brought Slow down, her Dynamic Leadership Level 1.2 speech, with Andy as her evaluator. Her improvement was striking enough for Jason to point it out while hosting. Christy evaluated Mini, and Anna evaluated Tao.

MM 101: asking one person at a time

Tao’s MM 101 drew on the week he had just spent recruiting volunteers. The title supplied its three numbers: one message to the group, zero sign-ups, then one-to-one conversations. He described looking at the empty list and wondering whether he had done something wrong. Having run other groups, he recognised the silence, but it still felt personal when he was the one waiting.

Specific invitations changed things. He asked Jason to host and Danny to be General Evaluator. Then he approached Anna about evaluating his speech. She was unsure she could give useful feedback. Tao passed on an idea he had learned from Danny: start by listening carefully and sharing an honest response. Within an hour, Anna said yes. His advice to future Meeting Managers was to suggest a specific role and listen to the person’s concerns.

Before the meeting, Tao had practised through conversations with ChatGPT. He worked on remembering concrete scenes rather than memorising every sentence: the unfilled role, the sign-up message, the silence and the personal invitations. On stage, he spoke in his own words and returned to the same practical advice: be specific, and talk to people one to one.

The conversation continued afterwards. Anna, who had read his script beforehand, said that doing so had left her thoughts less clear. Tao observed that words which work on paper do not always come naturally out of your mouth. David added a reminder to prepare without becoming bound to the script.

A complete story in two minutes

David’s theme was Your Story, Your Life, introduced before the meeting through the documentary series 7 Up. He won Best Host for Table Topics; Tracy won Best Table Topics Speaker.

Afterwards, Cecilia asked a question that will sound familiar to many Table Topics speakers: how do you fit a complete, structured answer into two minutes?

Jason suggested getting on stage more often and collecting stories from everyday life. Cecilia wanted practical techniques too. David offered three ways to arrange an answer: move through past, present and future; compare experiences in different places; or talk about different parts of life, such as work, home and being a parent. Three possible structures for the next time a question catches you unprepared.

What stayed with people

Danny keeps bringing something new to his General Evaluation. This time, every evaluation drew laughter. He had said that his next Pathway would focus on humour and stand-up comedy, and Tuesday gave us a taste of it. Later that night, Stella told him she had laughed until her stomach hurt, more than after Pilates. It was easy to see why the room voted him Best Evaluator.

Han’s contribution drew a different kind of response. After his questions about SAA duties earlier in the week, Anna singled out the change she had seen in him that evening and his growing sense of belonging. Han, who handled SAA and Guest Sharing, and Tina, the Timer, each received five votes and shared Best Facilitator.

The photos gave the group more to talk about. Andy spotted matching clothes with the same style, colour and even pattern, and joked that only twins could manage it. Winston shared the first-half photos, while Tao praised Danny for directing people into a balanced composition. Thank you to everyone who helped preserve the evening, in front of the camera and behind it.

One less job for the next Meeting Manager

The next morning, Tao shared an Agenda Maker that turns the role sign-up into a printable agenda. Han asked how it worked and soon reported that he had tried it himself.

This week’s Meeting Manager had a speech about the job. The next one has a new tool to help with it.

Authentic, even when you cannot stay until the end

Min signed up as Grammarian and brought us the word of the day: authentic. She could not stay until the end because she needed to look after her child. We really appreciated her being there and what she contributed before leaving. To us, her presence was itself an example of being authentic: coming as herself, with both her enthusiasm for the club and her responsibilities at home.

Andy, Christy and Tina also had to leave early. Tina missed the awards presentation, including her own shared Best Facilitator award. Many of our members are parents now. Between children, work and the rest of life in Shenzhen, everyone has a lot to attend to. We may not always be able to stay for the whole evening, but we still make time to come together on Tuesdays.

Fourteen cards

Danny opened with a question: how many meetings have you attended at SZTM? Then he took a stack of BEST cards out of his pocket and counted them on stage, one to fourteen. Fourteen meetings, fourteen BEST cards. And how many speeches does a Pathway take? Also fourteen. He wrote every word of them, even though it took him seven years and three clubs.

The rest was about Danny himself. First the Cantonese boy at university in Tianjin, popular for his Cantonese, then for his English, until the campus radio station tested his Mandarin and the judges could not stop laughing. Then the soldier, whose only answer was “Sir! Yes, sir!”, even when the answer meant asking for a satellite. The last part was a reflection that came from a eulogy he once gave, and it brought him back to the title: before how we connect, introduce who we are. “Hi, I’m Danny. Glad to know you.”

The next morning he submitted his path completion: “So glad to complete my first pathway in SZTM.” His next path, he says, will be mostly stand-up comedy. Anyone who has watched him host or speak may think he started a while ago. When he asked an AI about his script, it told him he never explains his jokes, which is how a comedian thinks, not a speaker. That night one member laughed so hard she was hitting the wall, and Anna’s advice to new members was never to look Danny in the eye on stage. We look forward to the stand-up path.

Can we think less?

Tina, who was also the Meeting Manager, gave her first Level 1 speech: AI Is Smart, but Can We Think Less? It began with an AI app that added up the numbers in a photo, got the total wrong, and apologised. “But does an apology give me back my time?” Then a Wharton study, Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial: when the AI was wrong, most participants went along with it. Her advice was to use AI as an assistant, not a decision maker. “Let’s use AI to do more, not to think less.”

Danny was her evaluator. He told her that on stage she is the boss, so her gestures can be bigger, and offered a new title: “AI wrote this speech for me, but I have to do the speech myself.” He also filmed her speech. Watching it the next day, Tina found small movements she had not noticed, and decided body language needs deliberate practice too. Not many speakers go back and watch themselves. With that habit, her next speeches should show it.

Numbers that shape our lives

Stella ran Table Topics on her own theme, with eight questions on the screen: the number in your checkup report that worries you most, whether one number ever changed how you live, whether you would pay more for a 666 or 888, and what numbers cannot measure.

Plans changed at six thirty

The evening was rearranged at the last minute. Susie, the planned Toastmaster of the Evening, had no one to look after her daughter, so Stella took over hosting on top of Table Topics, and won Best Host. In the end Susie came anyway, half an hour late, with her daughter, and answered a Table Topic. Her daughter did not understand the English, but she started laughing every time Danny came back on stage. When she was sitting alone, Danny went over to keep her company. Cecilia arrived without a role and was handed Table Topics Evaluator. She said afterwards it felt like sleepwalking, but David told her she did an excellent job.

Danny also took the Moment of Truth, with a theory of lucky numbers from the Five Elements. Members spent the rest of the night working out their own numbers.

One new member, one returning

Two members to welcome this week. David came back after a busy stretch away from the club, answered a Table Topic and won Best Table Topics. The officers were as happy as anyone; someone brought drinks for the occasion. Han had been to a few meetings before, and that night he paid his membership fee. His WeChat name is 雨, “rain”, which took the member group a few minutes to work out: so Rain is Han and Han is Rain? Tao answered with a pun, 汗如雨下, “sweat falling like rain”, where Han sounds like sweat. And Anna, applying Danny’s Five Elements, decided that Han, which also sounds like drought, needs Rain to balance it.

Tommy came from Oasis Club as General Evaluator, his fourth visit to SZTM and his first at New Oriental; he won Best Evaluator, and asked if he could rehearse his November contest speech here. Della, a new guest, found the club through an events app and asked whether SZTM does anything besides meetings.

Thank you, Winston

Almost every photo on this page is Winston’s. It was his second time as the club’s photographer, and he sent more than thirty pictures to the group before the night was over, asking everyone to pick the ones they liked. He wrote that through the lens he could watch everyone’s mood and gestures, their laughing and smiling, and that it lifted him out of a tiring day. If a picture flatters you, he said, that is your own doing; if it does not, blame his skills. Members disagreed: one guest said the photos really came out well. Thank you, Winston, for giving everyone a night worth looking back on.

Mini, Hark Master and Best Facilitator, summed up the evening: learning English is something each of us has to do alone, but on a dark road, everyone here brings a lamp, and with all of them together you feel you could walk until dawn.

Dinner, or a meeting?

It was the night before the National Day holiday, and many members had already left town. The day before, the officers talked it over: with so few people around, should the club book a restaurant and turn the evening into a holiday dinner, or keep the meeting room? A dinner sounded fun. The worry was the speakers, who had prepared, and a noisy dinner table is a hard place to give a speech.

By Tuesday morning the sign-up list was still short. The officers settled it: keep the meeting, drop the roles nobody had taken, and let whoever came cover the rest. Anyone who wanted to bring dinner to the meeting room was welcome.

A former member once said there is no meeting Shenzhen Toastmasters cannot run. That night proved it again: seven members and four guests, and the meeting ran from opening to awards.

Nobody voted

At noon Tao rebuilt the agenda with the fewest possible roles, and asked the obvious question: with this few people, do we still need a vote? The Meeting Manager’s answer was short. No vote. Everyone who comes gets one.

At the end of the night everyone held up a BEST card for the photo. Tao posted it with one line: everyone is at their best. Danny, who was away, saw it and wrote back: the whole room got BEST.

Two speeches

Mini spoke first, “Beauty in the Wrinkles”, about how she grew up as a teacher. She crumpled a sheet of paper on stage, and her slide put it plainly: scars become part of the canvas. Stella evaluated her. The next morning Tao said he was looking forward to the parts she had left out, in her next speeches. She promised they would come.

Camellia gave “Eat Well, Feel Well”, a speech meant to get the audience eating well and remembering meals that mattered. She had kept reworking the script all the way up to the day. Afterwards Tao suggested she try memorising by scenes next time, a method he has found works well. Nobody signed up to evaluate her, so the whole room did.

Table Topics: saying goodbye

Jason took Table Topics under the theme on the poster: what have you finally learned to let go? The poster borrowed the farewell at the Grey Havens from The Lord of the Rings, with figures on a pier waving at a ship sailing west.

The room did not stay at the Grey Havens. Anna had planned something like decluttering, saying goodbye to things. She ended up acting out a full breakup. Stella also meant to keep it light, but an old memory came back: her story was true, about quitting a boss who kept rewriting the sales commission every time her numbers went up, and starting her own trade business. By the end, as one member put it, nobody got a graceful breakup; they were all a mess. Anna’s observation the next day: when you have no time to prepare, your brain reaches for things that really happened.

Jason said he still had one scene he never got to use: your ex wants to return every gift you ever gave her, and you have to talk face to face. Tracy’s view was that a courier would do, and anything more is just an excuse to stay in touch.

The youngest guest

One of the four guests was Kaixin, Tao’s son, who is in third grade and has never dared to go on stage. So Tao found him a way: Tao asked the questions on stage, and all Kaixin had to do was say yes or no. Then he ran a survey of his own, going round the room asking everyone whether they preferred cats or dogs, and wrote down every answer himself on a crumpled sheet of paper: four for dogs, three for cats and three for both. He meowed now and then, which Mini said reminded her of her niece. He spent the rest of the evening reading a children’s history book in the back row, then left it behind. It turned up in Tao’s bag the next morning.

Cecilia, who could not come, said her two-year-old daughter watched the video and asked what the boy was doing. Tao suggested she bring her next time. Stella’s view: children who come along grow up at SZTM together.

Who was there

Seven members and four guests: Kaixin, Zhouzhou, Smith and Eric. Mini kept chatting with Eric all the way to the metro station. Winston, last week’s photographer, could not make it and sent a note instead: farewell is a romantic and beautiful word for the night before National Day.

The next morning Susie said she regretted missing it, and guessed that a small room made it easier for people to open up. Tao agreed.

A first-timer ran the show

The agenda listed Stella as TME. On the night, Stella decided to hand the role to Cecilia, who had joined the club exactly one week earlier, and moved herself to General Evaluator.

It worked. Several officers only found out halfway through that the host was a new member; Tao asked the officers’ chat whether she was. Afterwards Danny guessed she must have hosting experience, and Stella said she was nothing like a newbie. Cecilia’s own account: her only experience was one company annual party. Her plan had been to read the agenda word for word and make no mistakes, but as the speeches went on she started adding her own bridges between them. When Andy lost his place mid-speech, she summarised his story and carried the room into the next segment, which he thanked her for the next morning. She also admitted that the moment she made eye contact with the audience, her nerve went.

She was voted Best Host. Her Ice Breaker is scheduled for October.

Evaluating from the floor

By Tuesday morning, the three speech-evaluator slots were still empty. Tina suggested the three speakers evaluate each other. Mini, the Meeting Manager, said she had been thinking the same. Tao proposed a pooled segment where anyone could give feedback. Danny offered a variant he had seen elsewhere: after each speech, the speaker stays on stage for three minutes and the audience gives open feedback. Christy asked whether this was a group job interview.

Mini put it to a vote: option A, a ten-minute open segment at the end; option B, three minutes of feedback right after each speech. B won. There was no time left to change the printed agenda, so the meeting ran option B off-script.

In practice it worked like an interview. Andy had one official evaluator, Tracy. Tao and Danny stayed at the front and took questions from the audience. Stella, as General Evaluator, was voted Best Evaluator.

Prepared speeches

Tao, “Cross the Line” (read the manuscript). A former by-the-book driver who once scolded his wife for crossing a solid line (“Everyone does it.” “That doesn’t make it right.”) ends up crossing one himself at a badly designed intersection, and hears his own sentence thrown back at him. He closed with two questions for the room: am I following the rules, and are these rules working? In the interview, the audience asked whether his risk-taking depends on who is in the passenger seat. It does: if it is Jason, he goes.

Andy had two days to prepare “How to Win-Win?” and had written more than he could memorise. He learned the first story on the way to the meeting and planned to glance at his phone for the second. When the words ran out, he joked his way through it and pulled out the phone. Christy said that was the part she liked best. Stella said the speech got better as it went: the first story was a little stiff, the second was smooth and funny. The second story, about a money negotiation at home that did not go the way he planned, had the room laughing hard enough that Tracy forgot evaluations were coming. Tracy, his evaluator, was unwell that night and could not finish; she wrote to him the next morning that he juggles work and family and still keeps showing up to speak and take roles. Danny called him the natural stand-up comic of the three. Andy’s own view: “As long as I’m not embarrassed, the embarrassment belongs to someone else.”

Danny gave a twenty-minute business etiquette workshop for his Dynamic Leadership Level 5 project (slides). He built it on the first English dialogue every Chinese student learns: “Hello. How are you? I’m fine, thank you. And you?” Each line became a stage of hosting a client: greeting, caring, presenting yourself, respect and gratitude, and staying connected. As Danny put it afterwards, the five parts are not only a complete conversation, but also a complete mindset for business manners.

A fictional assistant called Tony got every stage wrong. He was late to the airport, handed over a crumpled business card, left the client waiting in the hotel lobby, sat in the wrong row at the meeting, and took twenty minutes to order dinner. Each mistake led into Danny’s checklist for doing it right. The farewell section opened with “The first impression can be fixed. But the last impression often can’t.”

Business cards got the most time. Danny opened with Joe Girard, whom Guinness World Records recognised as the world’s most successful salesman: 13,001 Chevrolets in fifteen years, all sold one-on-one. His line: “The only product you sell in your entire life is yourself.” Danny had expected the name to ring a bell in the room. It did not. Eight rules for giving and receiving a card followed, summed up as: “What you hand over is a card, but also yourself. What you receive is a card, but also respect.”

Then he handed out his own card. The front carries one line in Latin, “Quod tango, muto” (what I touch, I change), and under it: “Change the lives of others for the better, then get rich.” The next morning Christy said the line had real depth.

He had rehearsed it several times at home and came in under twenty minutes every time; live, he ran slightly over, which he blamed on the room being too good an audience. His method, when Tao asked: read the script aloud once, finalise it, then memorise it. In the interview, the questions kept coming back to his English, and his answer about how it got so good was delivered at a speed Cecilia described as taking off. He was voted Best Speaker.

All three speakers that night were men, which Stella pointed out that morning. Danny replied by offering himself as numbers 6666, 8888 and 9999 at the audience’s service.

Table Topics: Life Is Like A Play

Anna turned Table Topics into acting. Four speakers each got a slide with an emotion, a scene and a first line they had to open with. “Joy: The Unexpected Prize” put you at a company annual meeting, halfway through dessert, when the CEO reads out the grand-prize winner, and you had to begin with “Wait… did you just say MY name?” “Fear: Midnight, Alone” had you walking home from a late shift with 1% battery and footsteps behind you, opening with “It’s fine. It’s just a shadow… right?” The four who took the stage were Daisy, Tracy, Tina and Winston.

Daisy, a guest, drew Fear, and turned it around. Instead of playing the victim, she took control of the scene and stayed calm, and by the end it was the criminal who should have been afraid. Jason’s verdict: Hong Kong women are tough, Guangxi women are tougher. She won Best Table Topics.

Tina’s story was full of detail, including a hiking fall and a trip to hospital, and Andy somehow ended up in it. Stella wondered whether it had really happened. Danny said he wanted to turn to Andy and ask what he had done. Tina’s reply the next day: she does not like hiking, she made it all up, and Andy was only in the story because he was sitting where she could see him. Tao said he would stop sitting in the corner.

The photographer

Winston, a guest, took the On-Camera role. By 20:14, before the meeting was over, he had already posted twenty-four photos in the group with a note: pick the one you like best, and if you are torn between two, just pick one. Kingsley said the photographer tonight was very advanced. Later Winston added a set of deliberately goofy shots, starting with one of Jason. Most of the photos on this page are his. He shared Best Facilitator with Christy, the Timer.

Who was there

Four guests: Lorrence, Winston, Han and Daisy. Han, who first came the week before, took the Hark Master role this time. Susie, Rebecca and Camellia could not make it. Rebecca asked for a recording so she would not miss the speeches.

No TME tonight

Nobody signed up as TME. Rather than drafting someone at the last minute, the club tried an experiment: no host. Each role-holder would call the next one on stage. Danny volunteered as backup if things went sideways.

It was chaotic. Tao admitted as much in the group chat afterward: “a bit chaotic, but we got through it.” The transitions were rough, the flow was bumpy, and nobody quite knew whose turn it was. But the meeting ran to completion, and the chaos became its own kind of entertainment. Sometimes a club learns more from what goes wrong than what goes right.

Prepared speeches

Sammi delivered a speech titled “Imperfect” for her Level 1 project.

Danny spoke on “VPM” for his Dynamic Leadership Level 5 project, reflecting on the importance of the VP Membership role. His argument: even a great product needs marketing. Many guests need a push before they commit to joining. The VPM’s work is fragmented and time-consuming, but it is what keeps a club growing. Tao echoed this in the group chat afterward, calling VPM the most important officer role after President and VPE.

Jason played a special part in Danny’s speech. Danny had planted him as a heckler, and Jason delivered his line with uncharacteristic seriousness. Christy, who knows Jason well, noticed immediately: “He was so serious and smooth saying it. Not Jason style.” Danny later confirmed: “He was watching me carefully, waiting for the trigger word. First time I’ve seen him that serious.”

The debate: Things vs Experiences

Are you more willing to pay for real objects or experiences? Christy organized the debate. Anna served as Debate Master.

Pro (Real Objects): Camellia, Christy, Andy, Daniel Con (Experiences): Mini, Jason, Tracy, Tao

Tao published a debate prep PDF in the group chat beforehand, playing “open cards.” Daniel, a guest, joined the Pro side after Tina remembered his hobby from the previous week: debate. Stella invited him and he accepted immediately.

Things won, barely. Seven votes to six.

The debate produced moments that outlasted the result. Jason talked about his house and his car, things he once loved and spent years paying for. What he remembers now: the birthdays with family, the friends who came for dinner, driving to Xinjiang with no phone signal for two days while his mother panicked. “What I remember is who sits next to me.” Tao talked about a Jay Chou concert in Hong Kong in 2014, a $2,000 ticket that became the best purchase of his life. Then he said buying a house might be his biggest regret: half his salary goes to the bank. Daniel opened his closing with a polite knife: “I want to thank the other team for their strong emotion, voice, strong argument, and also their poor logic.” Christy countered with statistics: 63% of American household spending goes to housing, transport, and food. Only 11% to education, culture, and entertainment. “This is the fact.”

Andy messaged the next day saying he was moved by Tao’s words during the debate, specifically “the Moment part.” Tao said he couldn’t even remember what he’d said. That may be the point: the best moments in a debate are the ones you don’t plan.

After the vote, Tao confessed he had argued himself into a corner: “Things are also for Experience. The logic is circular. I can’t convince myself anymore.” Anna’s reply: “Taobot can no longer maintain logical consistency.” Christy offered the resolution: things and experiences are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other.

Tracy brought the energy

Tracy almost didn’t come. She’d spent the afternoon locked in a tough negotiation with a client, a deal that had dragged on for over a month. Jason predicted she wouldn’t show. She showed.

Whatever frustration she carried from the negotiation, she channeled into the debate. Danny said Tracy brought the most laughter of the evening. Anna saw herself in Tracy’s intensity: “Is it a trade-people thing? I saw Stella and myself in Tracy.” Tracy explained later: “I was already heated from the negotiation. Then Jason sits there drinking beer every day while I’m working myself to death. Of course I went off.”

The next morning, Tracy sent a message: the month-long negotiation had finally closed that same evening. She was ready for a vacation. “The debate result doesn’t matter. We won fun and relaxation.”

New faces

Kingsley joined as a guest, invited by Camellia. Zijun returned to continue her membership transfer from Singapore. The day after the meeting, Cecilia officially joined the club. Danny introduced himself in the group chat as “the most introverted person in this club,” which nobody believed.