My Heart Is Where My Home Lies

Remember the first time you went abroad?
Getting off the plane, you were bombarded with a strange world with a totally different language system? Are you curious? Nervous? Or is it just the raw strangeness that overwhelmed you?

There is a young man, sojourning in a foreign country.

He worked hard and turned St. Petersburg into "home."

In July 2010, Meng Chen started working at Hainan Airlines with a specialty in Russian. He was assigned to the Moscow office in less than a year as field account manager. In 2015, Meng Chen was transferred to St. Petersburg as local office manager.

Such an "ideal" derives from an "accident"

On 2015’s Mid-Autumn Festival, Meng Chen received a call that on the Brussels-Beijing flight, a passenger was in critical discomfort. The plane was preparing emergency landing in St. Petersburg. To help the passenger with the language barrier in time, Meng Chen volunteered as the interpreter, communicating between the passenger and the medicare team from check-up to hospital check-in.

Meng Chen kept thinking:

"How much inconvenience has language barrier brought to the Chinese people?"

He discovered that the Chinese tourists who travel to St. Petersburg are mostly the elderly, who often miss flights because they don’t understand English. But if they can find Chinese signs at the airport, such problems will thus be eradicated.

Action speaks louder. On the next day, Meng Chen knocked on the door of the airport director. After their discussion, Chinese appeared under Hainan Airlines at the St. Petersburg Airport for the first time.

 

 However, new problems emerged.

There was a Chinese flight information board, but when information like flight gate, baggage conveyor was updated, it was still broadcasted through the PA system. Those Chinese tourists who don’t understand English would still run into trouble.

Meng Chen knocked on the door of the airport director for the second time. The conversation lasted longer. The process was difficult.

And yet, shortly afterwards, St. Petersburg airport began using Chinese as part of the broadcast.

With Meng Chen's effort, Chinese elements emerge from every corner of the airport.

Meng Chen's ideal was finally realized. Now at Pulkovo airport, there is Chinese logo everywhere as well as guides who can speak Chinese.

But Meng Chen did not stop there. Going forward, he will be promoting Chinese martial arts, painting, and Chinese calligraphy at the airport, bringing the Chinese culture into Russia. Let the Chinese travelers feel at home and tourists from the rest of the world experience the Chinese culture.

That young man

becomes the famous Chinese cultural ambassador in St. Petersburg

All because of a little "accident."