Li Ann's excellent adventure

Li Ann Loo and her Westin Hotel boss rush into a Sydney taxi bound for an important business meeting. To Loo's surprise, a strange man also boards their cab and is quickly introduced as a manager from one of the hotel chain's Beijing operations. The Sydney manager immediately blurts out: "Oh, Li Ann wants to work in China."

The following month, the young Australian hospitality worker arrives in Beijing and her new life begins.

Like China's growth, Loo's new expat life happened real fast. "I still can't believe how a chance meeting like that changed my life," says the 28-year-old. "I was at a stage in my life and career where I was looking to challenge myself," says the marketing communications manager at The Westin Beijing Financial Street.

"It's an incredibly frightening thought to pick up and move to a country for a new job where you can't speak the language and don't know a soul.

"But I wanted to learn a second language and there are endless opportunities here, especially in the hotel industry. The skills that I'm learning now will be invaluable to me in the future."

Loo was raised in the land down under but was born in Kuala Lumpur, to Malaysian parents. Her family migrated to Australia when she was 6 and she fitted nicely into Sydney's multicultural melting pot.

When Loo was 11, the family moved to Hong Kong for business, but after attending an international school for six months, she returned to Sydney to spend her teen years in boarding school. "I chose to go to boarding school as my parents would be moving around Asia and I wanted the stability of being back home and growing up in Australia," she says.

"If you ask my parents today, especially my mother, they wouldn't give me that choice again. Mom thinks boarding school made me grow up too quickly."

After school, Loo studied hospitality management and after graduation backpacked around Sweden for six months.

In 2003, she began her career at the Westin Sydney in the sales and marketing department, answering the telephone and working all sorts of strange hours and slowly climbed up.

Moving to China meant breaking away from her tight-knit social network and then there was the language barrier, which haunts every non-Chinese speaking expat.

"I remember for the first couple of months I traveled with magazines, translated cards and multiple, 24-hour phone numbers on speed dial just in case I got lost," she says.

"But I would have to say the toughest thing was leaving behind my friends. I was used to being away from my family so in turn my friends in Sydney became my family and support network.

"I know we live in the age of IM, Skype and e-mails but I didn't realize how much I would miss having them around, so the first couple of months were tougher than I had expected."

Loo's Asian looks add to her cross-cultural confusion problems. "Most of the time people are curious and will ask me where I'm from and when I say Australia they look confused and perplexed," she says.

Speaking Chinese is the key to opening many doors and to help with the language lessons her co-workers write down words on post-it notes and stick them on her computer screen.

"Its funny, I learnt colors and numbers by bargaining at Yashow and names of fruits and vegetables from the fruit store near my apartment," she says.

"And of course, like everyone else I practice on taxi drivers, and anyone game enough to enter into a conversation with me.

"I have to push myself to commit one word or phrase to memory a day, and learn words or phrases outside my daily life."

Loo admits she does not have a crystal ball to look into the future but believes China has opportunities she would not have back home.

"Also, the entire experience has challenged and taken me further both professionally and personally so I'll be here in China for as long as it feels like I'm being challenged in some aspect of my life," she says. "I'm not sure what I will do after China but I know that I have a lot more of the world to experience and see."

(China Daily 06/08/2009 page10)