Shanghai honors devoted expats
Print Edition
Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong presented medals and certificates to this year’s winners of Shanghai Honorary Citizenship and Magnolia Gold Awards yesterday.
Honorary citizenship, the highest award, was granted to Michio Fujimoto, an 86-year-old Japanese man who has been promoting Sino-Japanese friendship and contributing to Shanghai’s culture, tourism and environmental protection for about 30 years, including a youth exchange program and the Jiading Wisteria Garden.
When Fujimoto was mayor of Wake Town in Japan’s Okayama Prefecture 28 years ago, he set up a foundation with 50 million yen (US$440,000) to promote Sino-Japanese youth communication. It sponsors middle school students from Wake to visit counterparts in Jiading District.
He also raised 2 million yen and donated 120 wisteria of more than 30 species to create a wisteria park in Jiading, which is visited by about 500,000 people each year.
“You have made such great contributions to Shanghai that you fully deserve the Shanghai Honorary Citizenship,” Ying said at yesterday’s ceremony. “I hope you can continue to help promote Sino-Japanese friendship and exchange between Shanghai and the rest of the world.”
Fujimoto said he believes that such exchanges are helpful for promoting peace and development in East Asia and Sino-Japanese friendship.
“I will continue to do whatever I can to make contributions to the development both in Japan and China and I wish happiness to the people of Shanghai,” he said, adding that he loves Shanghai as his second home and wishes to leave half of his ashes under the wisteria in Jiading.
The 10 Magnolia Gold Award winners from the US, Ukraine, Ireland, Canada, Japan and India include managers in business, finance and service industries and experts in the fields of science, medicine and culture.
“All of my fellow laureates have made contributions to the development of Shanghai through the partnerships which we, and our organizations, have developed over the years with our counterparts in Shanghai,” said Patrick John Ledwidge, deputy chief executive of Ireland’s Cork City Council and the city’s director of Services for Strategic Planning and Economic Development. “These partnerships have also increased our understanding of each other. This is invaluable in itself.”
Of Shanghai’s vision of becoming an international economic, financial, trade and shipping center by 2020 and a globally influential scientific innovation center by 2030 and an extraordinary global city by 2040, he said: “Having watched Shanghai develop over the past 14 years, I have no doubt that this will all come to pass.”
He said Cork already has strong cooperation with Shanghai in education, health, recreation and public services.
Shanghai began to honor foreigners for outstanding contributions to the city with the Magnolia Silver Award in 1989. It set up the Magnolia Gold Award in 1992 and Honorary Citizenship in 1997. More than 1,500 foreigners have received one or all of these awards.
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