Working and living abroad is not unusual in today's world but not many people have covered nearly every continent. Born in Africa, raised in Europe and now working in South Korea for a French environmental company, multilingual Benjamin Chan-Piu is a veritable poster boy for globalisation - but he never planned things that way.
Only four months old when his parents fled political instability in Madagascar - a grandfather had emigrated to Antananarivo from Guangdong at the age of 14 to work in a family import business - for a new life in France, Chan-Piu grew up in what he remembers as a slice of paradise, in the Alps, soaking up inspiring scenery and some of the world's best skiing.
'I wasn't initially interested in travelling but there was military service in France and one alternative was to work for a French company abroad,' he says. 'If it wasn't to avoid the military, I might have stayed in France forever.'
Chan-Piu's business-school background and roots helped land him a job with a French chemicals firm in Beijing, where he was surprised to find his heritage and upbringing counted for little. 'When I arrived in China I thought I would find answers to my identity questions,' he says. 'But I realised that the part of me that is not French is not exactly Chinese either. For instance, I was taught to always respect my elders but when you look around in Beijing today, nobody does that. As anonymous individuals they have little respect for anyone.'
Work then took Chan-Piu to Connecticut, in the United States, where he spent a lot of weekends in New York. A position with Suez Environnement, a French company pecialising in the treatment of hazardous industrial waste, took him back to his beloved Alps, where for a couple of years he steadfastly declined offers to work anywhere else. The opportunity he eventually accepted was a country-manager post in Seoul, a place he knew little about, that would make him the only expatriate in an office of well over 100 people.
'I arrived a month after North Korea conducted its nuclear tests [in 2006], which was kind of worrying,' he laughs. 'But I found I could understand Koreans immediately as in a lot of ways, [the country] is more Confucian than China. The respect for elders, the focus on avoiding conflict in the corporate environment - this was always a big part of my family identity, so it's very easy for me to blend in. Once people understand I'm not from here, I get the usual questions: where are you from? Where are your parents from? Whenever they hear I'm Chinese, they don't have much of a reaction. There are actually a lot more Chinese here than the eye can tell and a lot of them have interesting stories.'