By David Ferguson

Pascale Bon - Gallic flair, charm, and brains behind Frasia Golf in Shanghai. [Photo credit: Frasia]

Pascale Bon is a Frenchwoman of extraordinary talent, energy, and ambition. Living and working in China for over 15 years, her life has been a constant story of transformation and renaissance, covering roles as a Senior Executive in a French nuclear company in Taiwan, the CFO of L'Oreal in Hong Kong, wife of Yin Dawei, a well-known Chinese film and television director who had Gong Li as one of his students, mother to three adopted Chinese daughters, and currently and most recently, the inspiration behind the Frasia Golf Training Center in Shanghai, the first French School for golfers in China. At the same time she is preparing her thesis for a Doctorate in Business Administration on the theme of the commercial development of golf in China, and how this can contribute to social and cultural development in the country.

The Frasia Golf Center has gone through a decades-long period of gestation. Bon originally graduated in France, and took a doctorate in Nuclear Physics, and a Masters in Commerce in Paris in her early 20s. This was also the time when, through a friendship with Australian colleagues, she discovered the game of golf.

Golf is fun! Try telling the Frasia kids otherwise... [Photo credit: Frasia]

But an early childhood fascination with China brought her to the Orient at the age of 24. There she worked in Taiwan, Guangdong, and Hong Kong, till a chance meeting in Beijing airport resulted in love, then marriage, to Chinese Director Yin Dawei, and a long-term move to Beijing. Over the next decade she became fluent in the Chinese language, and a connoisseur and appreciator of Chinese culture. Her husband has written a book of their story during this period.

Regular trips back to France allowed her to pursue her love of golf and to take part in organized competitions, resulting in a double-figure handicap. Then in 2004 she decided to take a seven-month sabbatical to allow her to attain her dream - a single-figure handicap, and the establishment of a golf school and the ability to organize golfing events in China.

This sojourn in France also gave her the opportunity to meet some of France's top golfers, notably Gregory Bourdy, two-time winner on the European tour and one of the French pairing at the 2008 World Cup of Golf at Mission Hills, and Gwladys Nocera, one of the top players on the LPGA European tour, and the 2006 European Ladies' Players' Player of the Year.

One of France's top players, Gregory Bourdy, with Celine, one of Frasia's youngest students. [Photo credit: David Ferguson]

Equally notable was a friendship that developed with one of the best-known figures in Ladies' golf in France, Christiane Barquez, and her son Patrice. Barquez is the manager of one of France's top clubs, the Makila Golf Club in Bassussary, in the Basque country in the south-west of France.