Paul Zimmerman on dodging the military and ditching his Dutch passport

RURAL DEVELOPMENT I was born in Rotterdam. When I was young we moved to Woerden, a small village in the heart of Holland. I’ve got a younger sister and three younger brothers. I wasn’t born the eldest – I became the eldest. I had an elder sister who passed away when she was two; meningitis. Woerden was a good place to grow up; there were fields and farmland and everything was (accessible by) bicycle. We cycled to school and were incredibly mobile. It was so easy to go anywhere you wanted, any time. But by the time you get to age 16 in a small village in Holland it gets pretty boring.

SCHOOL POLITICS My high school was fairly behind the democratisation movement that was running through Holland. I got involved in an underground newspaper and by the time I was 15 was writing articles for the student council. The headmaster, however, hadn’t moved on and young teachers were on short-term assignments that were not renewed if they weren’t supportive of his policies. They were the most popular teachers with the students. When (their contracts weren’t renewed) in my last year, we barricaded the school and closed it down for a week. Education officials came down from The Hague, the headmaster was put on sick leave and then replaced, and the whole school was modernised. I went to study economics in Rotterdam and I got into politics with the democrats. My studies slowed down, however, because my dad pulled me into his business. He imported textiles from China and Asia.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT? At that time in Holland, the first two sons of every family had to do military service. My friends told me it was two months of training in Germany and 14 months of drinking beer in Holland. A waste of time. But if I had a job outside Nato member nations, I wouldn’t need to do the draft. I got a three-month traineeship with a Dutch bank in Hong Kong and arrived here in 1984. I was excited to see another part of the world. In the daytime, I would work and then in the evening I would go home, put on my shorts and walk the streets. I walked everywhere, ate everything, it was a great way of getting to know the city. But I didn’t like banking and it didn’t like me.

The sites and sounds keeping Paul Zimmerman amused and informed

ALONG CAME JACK In 1987 I set up my own business doing production work, brochures and literature. I started it in my bedroom and it grew into a graphic design firm. I sold my company in 1997 to the people that were organising the Hong Kong handover ceremony. They had 120 staff in town, for one project, one date. After that they had nothing left for them here, so they were looking for acquisitions. They liked my client list. Their event capacity and my design studio we combined into a communications firm, which later became Jack Morton. I left that in 2001 and wasn’t sure what to do. I had money in the bank and no job – I could have left Hong Kong. I looked at Holland and realised it was really boring. I looked at Australia and decided that it was beautiful, but boring. And Shanghai is a fun city if you’re single, but it isn’t a great place for kids; I had married a Chinese lady and we had had two sons, who were born in 1993 and 1995.