On the last Friday of every month, about 20 Irish men and women gather in a small bar run by a Welshman in the centre of Beijing. Free Irish stew and shepherd's pie are laid on for the group, while pints of Guinness are guzzled at €6 a go, writes Miriam Donohoe
By midnight, the musical instruments come out and the inevitable sing-song starts. Dublin in the Rare Oul Times and The Fields of Athenry always manage to get an airing.
The same scene, I am sure, is played out regularly in cities all over the world where Irish people have set down roots.
If you had told me two years ago that I would have been part of this "stage Irishness" for a period of time, I would have laughed and cringed. On foreign visits in the past I have always prided myself on checking out where the Irish bars are, and then avoiding them like the plague.
When my family set out on our great Chinese adventure, we were determined to embrace this amazing eastern culture and not spend a lot of our time in the company of Irish people. We were going to be different, and forge new friendships with Chinese and expats from other countries.
However, we quickly realised you just can't get away from your roots, and keeping links with other Irish and with home became hugely important to us.
It is only when you live away that you really value your Irishness. That is not to say that every emigrant spends his or her waking hours pining for the auld sod. Far from it. But you do learn to wear your Irishness with a fierce pride. Being Irish abroad means something different today than it did 10 or 20 years ago.
Mary Robinson made our far-flung "diaspora", driven from their homeland in their thousands for economic reasons, a central plank of her presidency. Her successor, Mary McAleese, prefers to use the word "family" rather than "diaspora", and has also used her Presidency to reach out to emigrants.
This week I reported on Mrs McAleese's first visit to the Far East. She didn't make it to China this time, maybe next year, but she took the vibrant Irish communities in Thailand and Malaysia by storm.
Most of the Irish people the President met in Bangkok, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur and Penang were not victims of the forced emigration of the 1980s and early 1990s, but were opportunity-seekers and adventurers who had decided to have a taste of that huge world out there. They are a far-reaching, successful and enterprising group of people who, as Mrs McAleese pointed out several times during the week, are valued, unpaid ambassadors for our country.
I'll admit that before this trip I did not know a whole lot about our President. But she bowled everyone over, from the business and media delegation that travelled with her, to Irish expats, Malaysians and Thais she met at various functions. Everyone got the same treatment, whether they were king or commoner.
A wonderful orator, she hit the right buttons everywhere she went, and it was all clearly from the heart. When she visited a hostel for HIV mothers and children, Mrs McAleese was genuinely moved and showed compassion. When she met the Prime Ministers of Thailand and Malaysia, she spoke of the potential of developing economic links between the two countries.
When the President, a great lover of the GAA, attended the finals of the Asian Gaelic games in Phuket, she cheered with the best of them. Teams of Irish from all over the Far East took part, and she was genuinely touched to see our native hurling and football, so much part of our Irishness, flourish in this far-flung part of the world.
ON Sunday evening hearts swelled with pride when the President walked on to a makeshift stage outside the Green Man Irish bar in Phuket to present the winning team from Korea with its trophy. Two of the games organisers, big lads, broke down and sobbed with the emotion of it all.
We should not forget her husband, Dr Martin McAleese, always by her side and a man who hugely complements Mrs McAleese in her job as President, but also a person who is modest and who does not seek the limelight.
Mrs McAleese touched on the peace process a lot in the last week, and there is no doubt that the fact that no bombs are going off in the North has helped Irish nationalists' view of themselves.
The President proved this week that she has a sense of humour, too, something all-important in a demanding job like hers. On Tuesday night she told a gathering of 400 Irish and Malaysians in Kuala Lumpur of Ireland's incredible modernisation over the last 50 years. But she pointed out that not everyone had been so willing to embrace change, not least her grandfather.
When electricity was introduced to rural Ireland, she said, her grandfather refused to get "that quare thing" in, predicting that it would "never catch on". He didn't budge from that view to the day he died. As the President related the story, one of the light bulbs over the podium she was speaking from exploded, making a loud bang, and leaving her in semi-darkness. That would have thrown most people off balance, but not our President. Quick as a flash she quipped: "Maybe me grandfather was right after all".