Between the lines

By Chitralekha Basu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-10 17:48

Thousands of tourists pass around Can Ozkan at the Forbidden Palace. Ozkan is Chief Representative of the Beijing branch of Flex, a Tourism and Travel agency. Jonah M. Kessel

You could be forgiven for thinking Can Ozkan was born in Turkey by mistake. Even as he was studying for his degree in travel management at the University of Firat in Elazig, he would make friends among the small Chinese community living in that town and keep talking to them in Mandarin to get a grip on the language.

Later, when the Chinese Embassy in Ankara employed him, the lone Turkish staffer in an all-Chinese office, it gave him scope to fine-tune his Chinese skills. As a restaurant manager and tour guide with the embassy he made his mark.

Soon Ozkan earned his Chinese guide's license from the Ministry of Tourism in Ankara and went through a half-year training period, taking Chinese tourists around Turkey.

In between, he married a local Chinese girl, but the marriage was less than perfect. And then he met Yan Ting, an attractive young Chinese woman tour guide on an assignment to Istanbul, who was still a bit of a greenhorn, looking for directions. Ozkan, with six years of professional experience behind him, was able to hold her hand as she found the way.

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