Darcy Au-Yeung Enjoys The Simple Life In Beijing

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Over the next few weeks, we will be profiling several exceptional educators who will be remaining through the 2022-2023 school year. So, have no fear, parents. Your child will be in good educational hands next year!

Teaching started as Darcy Au-Yeung’s way of traveling and seeing the world, but ended up becoming his whole world. In 2004, he came to Beijing from Canada to continue that teaching career, and after exploring several different roles including being an entrepreneur, Au-Yeung has found his way back to the classroom this year with “renewed purpose and direction”. He currently teaches DP Economics and Social Innovation at Daystar Academy.

“I’ve enjoyed so many experiences and have been heavily influenced by a number of people, both friends as well as foes, and somewhere along the way I met my amazing wife,” shares Au-Yeung.

Outside of school, you’re most likely to find Au-Yeung on the golf course, which happens to be his favorite place to go to in Beijing, or enjoying the company of the important people in his life. He succinctly sums up, “That’s all I need.” As further testament to his minimalistic life, Au-Yeung has been weaning himself off other social media platforms except for WeChat, and he says it has been wonderful.

Since the pandemic hit, life has been chaotic, to say the least, especially for expatriates who have not been able to travel to their home countries to visit family and friends.

“Sure the last couple of years have brought about a number of inconveniences and barriers to what we’ve known to be a normal life and it tests the very limits of our patience.” Au-Yeung shares his outlook,

“What keeps me going is knowing that if I or we stop moving forward, we’ll never reach the end. We don’t need to be happy about what the pandemic has done to our lives, but we can’t let our discontent paralyze us.”

It’s clear that Au-Yeung believes in simplicity and focusing on the positive. When we asked him how we as parents can help make online learning more successful for our kids, he said, “Parents, model focused attention by doing one thing at a time and avoid splitting your attention between people and devices. Students, remove the distractions and create an environment in which you can be focused on learning. 

Don’t let the fact that it’s online take away the thrill that you get from learning new things.”

Know an awesome expat teacher who continues to tough it out here in Beijing? Tell us who they are so we can get in touch with them to give them some recognition!

Images: Courtesy of Darcy Au-Yeung

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