Name: Guy Dru Drury
From: Corfe Castle, Dorset
Living In: Beijing

“Being in China is a challenging, thrilling and at times humbling experience and I just can’t think of anywhere else in the world I would rather be.”

Guy first visited China in September 1988 while on an undergraduate exchange with Leeds University.  He then spent the last 20 or so years working a variety of jobs across the world in Europe, Southeast Asia and in Southwest China, but all with China as a common theme.

Currently, he is the head of the Confederation of British Industry in China, keeping in close contact with the vast and growing range of UK companies, entrepreneurs and businesses that have come to do business here.  This brings him across the entire length and breadth of Mainland China, often visiting companies in China’s regional cities.

Watching triathletes competing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he was inspired to take up the sport and now describes himself as a triathlete nut.  He completed the Nanjing Triathlon and has his sights set on the 70.3 Ironman in Hainan Island next year.  If you see a lycra-clad cyclist battling Gobi headwinds on the highways north of Beijing it could well be him!

In order to give something both back to China and his adopted province of Sichuan – where his wife comes from – he recently completed a charity bicycle ride of over 200km from Beijing to Chengde (206.5 KM) on the anniversary marking one year from the Beijing Olympics.  Riding alone with all logistics, training preparation and organisation done in temperatures over 35 degrees, it was a tough trip.  His local support driver told him after the ride that he had accompanied him as much to see whether he would survive the challenge as to take him home should he collapse!  The 7 hours and 18 minutes in the saddle were worthwhile, however, when he was able to provide over RMB13,000 that he raised to one of the kindergarten schools that were devastated in last year’s Sichuan earthquake.

Like many of the Britons living here it is the personal relationships and ties that are built with this extraordinary country that truly makes Guy call China home.