A Tuesday in Futian
The room from the back, after the meeting has finished and before anyone has gone home. The flags overhead have been there for years, and so have the ribbons hanging off the banner in the corner. Sixteen or so people on a normal week, more when word gets round.
Meeting #1027 →
RMB 5,700
A collection, taken at a meeting. The slide lists every donor by name: twenty members and five guests, plus Joanna's friend, Lilian's friend, Cherry's colleague, Frank Lee, and Share's mother. Afterwards the president handed out certificates. The club captioned the photo “Together!!”.
Around twenty-five people, one banner
Taken in the old room on the sixth floor of Xinghua Building, and posted with the line “Looking forward to our 436th Meeting”. Half the faces are laughing at whoever is holding the camera.
Meeting #436 →
Best speaker, best evaluator, best facilitator
Three awards at the end of every meeting, voted by everyone in the room. The ribbons are small. People keep them.
Meeting #1026 →
Happy to be a member
New members with their certificates, and the row behind them applauding. Everyone in that photograph joined the same way: turned up as a guest, came back, spoke twice, filled in a form.
The 434th meeting
The theme that evening was Balance and the word of the day was Prioritize: decide which are the most important and do them first. Nearly six hundred meetings later, the club is still running the same format.
Meeting #434 →
The part that is not on the agenda
Shenzhen Bay at sunset, on a Sunday in July. The club has a long-standing weakness for dinner; the word “eating” has come up in the group chat more than two thousand times.
Shenzhen Bay →
Distinguished guests
Somebody produced a selfie stick. The banner behind them is the same one that still comes out of the cupboard every Tuesday.
Everyone came back in school uniform
The club turned fifteen and threw itself a school day: uniforms, red scarves, balloons, an opening ceremony. Someone put on the music for the national radio exercises that every Chinese schoolchild is drilled in, and the whole room turned out to still know it. Thirteen past presidents were there in person and seven more sent video messages.
Fifteen →
The banner, halfway up a valley
A Sunday spent walking up a stream at Yuanshan. The write-up opened by asking who says Toastmasters people only make speeches, then spent the rest of the day proving otherwise. The meeting time was half past nine; the last arrivals got through the gate at ten to eleven.
Yuanshan →
Two days at Jiaochangwei
The club rented a whole building by the sea in Dapeng. After the barbecue everyone stood up on the platform in the cold and spoke for five minutes about themselves. In the morning two members got up early and made porridge and sweet potatoes for everybody.
Dapeng →
Thirteen contestants, two languages
The autumn contest, run in three parts: English evaluation, Chinese humorous speech, English humorous speech. One of the speakers who placed second had almost not entered at all. The club's write-up kept her reason in her own words: she wanted to give up at first, but she conquered herself at last.
The 2017 autumn contest →
It kept raining, so: badminton
The March hike was rained off, so the club moved indoors. Jane, who did not look like the most dangerous player in the room, turned out to be exactly that, and offered afterwards to coach anyone who came to the club's badminton outings, free.
Badminton →