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When Catalina Calin came to Beijing several years ago, the Romanian fashion designer found it wasn't easy to make friends among expats in the capital.

"There were plenty of business networking groups," she says, but the usual frenzied business-card exchange over cocktails in a hotel bar didn't give her much sense of a community. She wanted relationships that lasted longer than the Big Three Questions: Where are you from? How long have you been here? What do you do?

Then she and her partner, architect and interior designer Jaime Daza, discovered InterNations, an international network founded in Munich by Malte Zeeck in 2007.

"The aim," Zeeck says last week in a video conference as the network clocked its 1 millionth member worldwide, "is to make life abroad easier by offering our members opportunities for social integration in their new hometowns."

The emphasis, Calin says, is on the "social". "There are no speeches, no vouchers, no lucky draws," she says, "just quality programs that help you make new friends and enjoy the expat life." While there are no VIPs, people who pay to be Albatross-level members enjoy savings and easier website access.

"People do exchange business cards," Daza acknowledges, but the monthly Beijing cocktail receptions are not quick meet-and-greets to collect contacts.

"Here it's easy to talk in little groups for half an hour," says Yulia Vitnova from Russia, who handles marketing for a traditional Chinese medicine clinic. "Fifty percent of the friends I've made in Beijing, I've made through InterNations."

About 13,000 people in Beijing are members, from 174 countries including China. Shanghai has a slightly bigger chapter (15,000). China's two biggest cities represent about two-thirds of the nationwide membership.

Calin and Daza say that once people arrive at the monthly cocktail event and register, the guests are in charge. "There is no dress code, no set time to arrive, and no set program," says Daza, who hosted an event last week in an open-collared shirt and a casual college sweatshirt. (Calin, meanwhile, looks every inch the fashion designer in a stunning little black dress.)

Members don't just do their own thing at the big monthly mixers. They spontaneously form activity groups. Vitnova is a paintball group regular, while others gather for movie nights, weekend hikes, small dinner parties at local restaurants, French conversation, beer and whisky culture, bowling and many other activities. Semih Erken from Turkey runs a charity group, and also never misses an event with "my soccer people".

"I would never have imagined we'd have an archery group," says Daza with a grin. "But that's why these things are organized by the members - not by us - and posted on the online calendar."

Gundula Strittmatter, from Germany, organizes small newcomer events for recently arrived members who may be intimidated by the monthly cocktail party for hundreds.

"Big events can be overwhelming," she says, especially when you are already overwhelmed by a new city and culture.

Calin and Daza say one of the best things about InterNations is that people get plugged in before they even arrive. "Every day, we get e-mails like this: 'Hello, we are moving to Beijing soon. Can you help us find good school options for our third-grade daughter?' "

Ray Kelly, a veteran member from Britain says: "The expat life is a bit of a revolving door. Friends come and go all the time."

But while departures are never easy, Calin says the joy of new arrivals keeps things fresh, with the potential for new friends always on the horizon. If the outgoing fashion designer was ever really lonely in Beijing, you'd never know it now.

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/24/2013 page5)