Unexpected face upfront

Chen Yo-jung (left) chats with French ambassador to China Sylvie Bermann during his farewell reception at her residence. Provided to China Daily

Unexpected face upfront

Diplomat recounts life among multiple cultures

When Chen Yo-jung shows pictures of his soon-to-be retirement home in Japan, he gets some teasing from old friends. "Are you sure that's Japan?" his longtime squash opponent William Huo asks, as he looks at a chalet-style wooden building perched on a spring mountainside. "That looks like Switzerland!" It is not the first time Chen has generated good-natured confusion about where he is going or where he is coming from.

Recalling his student days as "a young man from Taiwan studying quietly in Japan", Chen's first steps to his unlikely career as a French diplomat came when he was recruited to be a translator as a graduate student in Tokyo.

"It seems quite strange to hire a Chinese guy to translate Japanese for French people," he says. But Chen had the tools for the job, after seven years of study in Tokyo and his union with his Japanese wife, Michiko.

Over time, his role as a translator became personal as well as professional. His late father, Chen Ching-ho, used to give an annual family address in the Taiwanese dialect, pausing every few minutes so the children could translate for their respective French, American and Japanese spouses.

Now, his sisters ask Chen to pass messages to their eldest brother. ("He is now French like me and living in Paris.") The sisters' French has gotten rusty and so has the brother's English, so they do not have a conversational language in common.

And while Chen has five languages in his repertoire - Chinese, English, French, Vietnamese and Japanese - his command of Vietnamese is not as polished as his mother expects. She is the daughter of a Vietnamese scholar, and the Vietnamese, like the Japanese, have strict rules about polite word usage.

"When I reply badly, I get scolded," Chen once told a US reporter ruefully.

"She thinks I'm being insolent."

But navigating the challenges of language and culture, after all, has been his life for four decades.

Not long after Chen found himself working for French diplomats in Tokyo, he was faced with a decision. Since he planned to have a teaching career in Japan, and had a Japanese wife, should he take that country's citizenship?

He planned to do just that. But his boss and mentor Jean Pierre Brunet, France's ambassador to Tokyo at that time, had a different idea.

Why not become a French citizen?

"It was a funny idea," Chen says he thought at the time. "I had never even been to France."

Brunet, however, was keen on Chen's potential future as a diplomat, and repeated the suggestion several times.

"Finally, he said to me, 'It would be a great honor for France if a talented young Chinese like you became a French citizen.' That really moved me."

Chen became French by long distance in 1981, thanks to the support of Brunet and several French diplomats who had met and respected the young translator.

His career took him next to the foreign ministry in Paris, where he was thrilled to see the sights of his adopted country, then back to Tokyo as vice-consul, and eventually to California and Singapore before his posting in Beijing.

His quiet, good-natured approach has carried him far.

"I won't tell you all the long story of my career," he told visitors at his retirement reception in late April.

"I'm planning to write my memoir, so I don't want to give you an excuse not to buy the book."

Chen also hopes to be writing commentaries about international affairs, when he is not gardening or playing with his grandchildren.

His time in the United States was the biggest challenge of his career, he says, because many Americans were angry that France did not support US intervention in Iraq in 2003.

"But I came to appreciate that Americans would really have a dialogue about this. Most of the time, they didn't just call up and yell," he says.

"And, of course, they had a surprise when they found themselves talking to a Chinese man. That really started a conversation on human terms."

Last autumn, he was honored with the French Order of Merit, bestowed by then French president Nicolas Sarkozy. ("France likes to give medals," Chen says modestly.) And most recently, Sylvie Bermann, his country's ambassador to China, hosted a reception for Chen at her residence to salute his long service.

That was when the pictures came out - highlights of his 38 years of work, gatherings with his friends and family, and glimpses of that almost Swiss-style home he has created in Japan.

"I will be happy to come down from my 1,300-meter-high mountain chalet to welcome any friends who come to visit," he jokes with his assembled friends, promising sake or tea to future guests.

"I never thought this would happen," Chen says of the recognition he has been receiving at the end of his career, at the French embassy in Beijing.

"My story is the story of a love affair, especially because I was not born French. I chose to be."

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn