Our 2nd Arthur Guinness Day was a huge success and we had great fun drinking Guinness and listening to our very our very own resident Irish artist Robbie, thank you to the staff and management of Paddy O'Shea's for their support of this event.

We have also had some wonderful speakers, Dr James T Quinlan, who spoke about his newly opened Puhua Clinic in Beijing, his military service in Afghanistan, Iraq and China's private hospital/healthcare sector. On October 8 Justin Lowes, head of Lowes Wealth Management,outlined how investors should identify companies around the world to invest in. We thank them very much for their time and for sharing their expert knowledge.

On October 16 we broke new ground for the INC by travelling into rural north Beijing for our very first field trip. We spent an afternoon among the cabbages, pigs and aubergine plants at the Little Donkey Farm, a pioneering organic and allotment project. After an all-organic lunch with the farm's volunteers and some vegetable shopping we got back on the bus for the city. We hope to be back on the road in November for our second such field trip. In the sporting world meanwhile, Beijing GAA Club (which INC sponsors) gaelic footballers went off to Hong Kong to return with lots of silverware- ours boys winning the Plate prize. while club stalwart's Colin Dixon and Jenn Pratt were honoured with Asian GAA All Star awards. Congratulations to all.

The annual Asia Pacific Irish Business Forum (APIBF) was also held in Hong Kong the end of September, congratulations to the INC's Catherine Toolan, who was honoured with the Business & Finance Irish International Business Person of the Year Award for 2010 at the event. We will hear more about the APIBF discussions at our AGM which will be held on Monday the 1st of November in Paddy O'Sheas @ 7.30pm.

Over the next two months we have lots going on. Note some dates to put in your diary and please check our website- www.irishnetworkchina.com for more updates of events. We are always looking for help with organising events, guest speakers for our business dinners and ideas for field trips; let us know if you are interested in helping out. The Irish Ball 2011 is not too far away, anyone who wishes to help out with this key event please come along to the AGM.

We would also like to wish the very best of luck to any of our members running the Beijing marathon this Sunday. One of these members is Colin Saunders as he takes on his first ever Marathon to raise funds for two very worthy charities - Bricks the Great Wall Charity Appeal in China and CARI in Ireland. If you would like to support Colin please contact him on 13601190783 or at colinpfjsaunders@gmail.com and let him know which charity you would like to donate to.

Click here to get our newsletter straight to your inbox »