KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

kay-marie.fletch­er
@guardian.co.tt

BEI­JING, Chi­na—While dis­ap­point­ment lingers in Port-of-Spain, where the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade was can­celled this year, a very dif­fer­ent scene un­fold­ed thou­sands of miles away in Bei­jing.

To mark the na­tion’s 63rd an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, the Em­bassy of T&T in Bei­jing host­ed a re­cep­tion on Fri­day, draw­ing dozens of na­tion­als, re­gion­al diplo­mats and friends from the di­as­po­ra.

With the pulse of so­ca mu­sic in the air and An­gos­tu­ra spir­its flow­ing, the cel­e­bra­tion car­ried a dis­tinct­ly home­grown flavour. Still, many ad­mit­ted the ab­sence of the tra­di­tion­al pa­rade back home was deeply felt.

Kirt­ly Fran­cis, a stu­dent from Ch­agua­nas, told Guardian Me­dia, “Yes, I at­tend it year­ly, and it will be some­thing that I miss. Tri­ni to the bone.”

Khaliqa Mo­hammed, orig­i­nal­ly from Diego Mar­tin and now work­ing at the Asian In­fra­struc­ture In­vest­ment Bank, agreed: “I al­ways watched it on TV in the morn­ing, so I think that will be missed. I know my fam­i­ly will al­so miss it. But I’m hap­py to cel­e­brate it over here.”

For Nicole Quan Kep, a Gas­par­il­lo-born busi­ness­woman who mi­grat­ed to Hong Kong more than 25 years ago, the mo­ment car­ried mixed emo­tions: “It’s emo­tion­al be­cause, as part of the di­as­po­ra, it’s a priv­i­lege for us to cel­e­brate—but it’s sad that cel­e­bra­tions at home were can­celled. We shouldn’t fo­cus on the neg­a­tive. Those of us abroad should be cel­e­brat­ing big and bold, and that’s why I’m here.”

De­spite the damp­ened fes­tiv­i­ties in T&T, na­tion­als in Bei­jing said In­de­pen­dence Day re­mains a time to re­flect on the na­tion’s path for­ward. Asked what lessons could be drawn from Chi­na, sev­er­al point­ed to dis­ci­pline, fear­less­ness and a strong sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

Ari­ma na­tive and ecol­o­gy stu­dent Ke­shan Ma­habir not­ed, “Chi­na has de­vel­oped so quick­ly. Trinidad start­ed with re­sources and po­ten­tial, so we can look at their mod­els for ed­u­ca­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness.”

Fran­cis added: “Their sur­veil­lance sys­tem is out of this world. It’s safe—each cor­ner has cam­eras. We have the space and tech­nol­o­gy to achieve that.”

Mo­hammed ad­mired the coun­try’s dri­ve: “The peo­ple here just go for it. It’s about ac­tion, and that’s some­thing we could adopt in Trinidad.”

Quan Kep em­pha­sised bold­ness: “We need to be fear­less. Trinida­di­ans have cul­ture, en­er­gy, pas­sion and warmth—we must take that to the in­ter­na­tion­al stage with con­fi­dence. Even though we are a small coun­try, what we rep­re­sent has val­ue.”

Strength­en­ing
ties with Chi­na

The Em­bassy high­light­ed the decades-long diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries, point­ing to the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and the ex­port of lo­cal rums as ex­am­ples of grow­ing eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion.

Chargé d’Af­faires Adri­an Thomas reaf­firmed that T&T is strength­en­ing trade and in­vest­ment links with Chi­na as part of its di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dri­ve.

“Bi­lat­er­al trade has ex­ceed­ed US$1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly since 2021,” Thomas said. “Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ter­pris­es are us­ing ma­jor Chi­nese trade ex­hi­bi­tions to in­tro­duce high-qual­i­ty lo­cal prod­ucts, such as our rums, to the Chi­nese mar­ket.”

He al­so praised the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate: “Now the largest 5G-con­nect­ed in­dus­tri­al park in the Caribbean, the park is ful­ly ten­ant­ed with Chi­nese and in­ter­na­tion­al firms lever­ag­ing our strate­gic lo­ca­tion to reach the wider Amer­i­c­as.”

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia, Thomas re­flect­ed on the pride of rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go over­seas.

“Our doors are al­ways open to Tri­nis here,” he said. “To be a Tri­ni means so much more when you rep­re­sent the red, white and black abroad. We’re proud of our achieve­ments, and while there’s still far to go, the em­bassy is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing our na­tion’s next chap­ter of de­vel­op­ment.”