A Little Kindness Goes a Long Way: An Interview with He Jian
“Fish & Friends Charitable Association was founded by a group of Chinese individuals studying and working in the UK in late January. Initially, it was set up to provide adequate medical supplies to hospitals in China and to support the government’s effort of fighting COVID-19. The group has successfully fundraised 75K+ USD worth of goods and helped more than 30 hospitals/organizations across 10 provinces in China. As the situation of coronavirus deteriorates in the UK, the group has shifted its focus to assist the National Health Service (NHS) since the beginning of April. It is now sourcing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) of high quality from China to send to British hospitals in desperate needs.”
He Jian currently serves as F & F Head of Procurement and UK Hospital Liaison. He joined F&F in late January and is currently in charge of procurement standards and liaison with hospitals in the UK. He is a graduate of Imperial College London and now works as a system reliability engineer in the petroleum industry and acts as a Trustee of Space Science & Engineering Foundation, an education charity fund that aims to promote science and engineering in the UK He loves volunteering and has been actively organizing school competitions and giving scientific talks to students since 2009.
What is Fish & Friend’s mission?
I think the mission of our Fish & Friends Association is quite simple. As you know, many organizations around the same time were trying to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) to send back to China, and later we were getting equipment from China and sending it to the UK. Basically, our mission is to bring personal protective equipment and send it to the hospital organizations in need of safety protection.
How did you get involved in the organization?
Starting around the 27th or the 28th of January, one of my friends in Hong Kong contacted me to see if we can send some PPE from the UK back to China, as his company was also trying to donate medical supplies to hospitals in China. My friend called me, and I did some research, but we were both stuck on the logistics—finding a shipping company to help us with the custom clearance, etc.—because at the time Wuhan was pretty much in lockdown.
What would you do in that scenario? I just posted something on my WeChat wall and said, “Hello friends, do you know anybody who has any contact with a company that deals with logistics?” A friend of mine saw the message, then she sent me another message that has been in circulation, which was originally sent by Ms. Fish. They had a WeChat group setup with people sharing the goal to purchase medical supplies and donate to China.
Because I had done some research for my friends and had some basic knowledge—there was information about the industry standard that Chinese hospitals were looking for, so I shared this knowledge with the group. Then, they put me in charge of all the requirements as the organization got bigger.
The team donated medical supplies to both China and the UK during a difficult time for everyone. How stressful was the process for the team?
Well, the whole thing from the beginning was quite stressful for some of us because none of us had any experience doing charitable work in health-related areas, and we all had other things to do—some of us had full time jobs and many others were studying. When the situation in the UK deteriorated, we just felt that there must be something that the Chinese community as a whole could do to help the UK hospital and the national healthcare system. By this time the situation had stabilized more in China, we thought we needed to help the British hospitals that were struggling. The same situation that happened in China earlier this year happened again in the UK because no country foresaw the full scale of the pandemic. They didn’t begin the fight fully prepared, and you saw doctors and nurses wearing raincoats to protect themselves from the virus, so we felt that there was something we could do to source the proper supplies from China to the UK.
What was the background of other members in the team? What initially motivated the team to act and then to persist in helping hospitals in both China and the UK?
All members in the group are Chinese, some are students now studying in the UK, some are working in the UK, and a small fraction of people have studied in the UK and now moved back to China. We started the group because the pandemic started in China, and we are all Chinese, so even though we live overseas, we try to help. But I think what kept us going was really the compassion and kindness that we have as members of the society and as human beings. We do not want to see any medical staff making the difficult decision between risking their lives and going to the hospital without proper protection to save lives or to see people suffering and dying from the disease, so it was the compassion that kept us going.
During the process, did you receive help from local communities in the UK?
We started sourcing suppliers from China to bring equipment back to the UK around the 1st of April, so it was quite close to the time of the nationwide lockdown in the UK, and we tried to work as contact-free as possible according to the law and actually didn't receive too much direct help from the local community. But, for instance, my neighbor saw me packaging supplies in the corridor. We had a conversation and she volunteered to bring some parcels to hospitals, and so did a colleague of mine, whom I actually met through another charitable group. I think my colleague is 17, if not younger, and she volunteered to drive around to deliver the parcel in London as well. I think any action of this kind during the pandemic and the lockdown is quite something because they are risking their lives to deliver these parcels to hospitals. We also got some help from other groups remotely via email. One group passed me information about the technical requirements of British hospitals, which are slightly different from the Chinese standards.
There was another group that started on Facebook, which I contacted to help bring some parcels to the post office because I didn’t have a car and it was quite difficult for me to manage the process contact-free.
Do you have any advice for students who want to engage in a similar kind of charitable work?
When I initially joined, I didn't know that I would be as engaged as I am now, six months later. I think a big thing is just to look around. When you see a difficult scenario, some other people are probably thinking about it like you, and they probably have already started doing something. It also doesn’t hurt to take initiative—a good will can join many people together and can go a long way.
Interviewer: Jane Yang