New Zealander Alex Worker has a lifelong relationship with China.

After his birth in Hong Kong, he was brought as a 12-day-old to Beijing, where his father, Carl Worker, was stationed as a young diplomat at the New Zealand Embassy.

"I think Dad took me up the Great Wall my first week or so," Alex says, laughing as he repeats a story his father often tells of changing his infant son's diaper while walking the Wall, to the amusement of local onlookers.