???Yikang Feng was raised in Shanghai. His grandmother was on Mao Zedong's Long March, the famous military retreat by the communists that saved them from the ruling nationalists' army.
He's now Captain Feng, on his second rotation with the Australian Defence Force to Iraq, training local forces in the fight against the so-called Islamic State.
On the 101st Anzac Day, the capability of a modern army like Australia's that battles shadowy insurgencies among civilian populations, or trains local forces who have their own intricate cultures, rests as much on understanding the world's array of peoples as it does on traditional war fighting skills.
Captain Feng is a case in point. He didn't know what Anzac Day was until he joined the Australian Army. He came to Australia at 18 to study, then became a Sydney finance trader with Macquarie Group and CommSec. He paints and plays cello.
By 2010, eight years after his arrival, he'd become an Australian citizen and a reservist in the Army. A colleague got him interested in the reserves and the rest he puts down to "sheer curiosity", "a sense of adventure" and a desire to contribute to his new home.
"It might sound corny but I appreciated the fact that Australia had given me a life here. I felt a sense of service and wanting to do something for my new country," he said by mobile phone from the training range at Taji base on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, with the crackle of gunfire in the background.
A stint deployed to Butterworth base in Malaysia had him asking himself, "What do I want to do with my life in the long run?"
"I was financially very comfortable but beyond money there was not a lot of satisfaction. I'd get up and go to work, finish work, come home, go to sleep, and do that every single day."
He quit the high life of finance and became a full-time army officer. It has been hard but fulfilling.
He now serves with the 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment based in Darwin, where he has a fiancee.
As second-in-command of a training company, he liaises with the Iraqis and oversees the trainers. Over two deployments, he's watched the Iraqis grow from shaky and uncertain fighters as they faced retaking the city of Ramadi, a key test when they were still on the back foot, to a confident force that knows it will conquer the great bastion of Mosul.
His background has helped him navigate the local culture, which has some of the social complexities of China such as saving face and the need sometimes to skirt issues gently rather than approach them head-on.
"My personal experience was I had to shift from Chinese culture into Australian culture and get myself integrated. I'm doing the reverse [in Iraq]. Arab culture has intricate social layers and structures.
"I'm not saying my trainers can't pick up the difference. I'm slightly more sensitive."
Just as important is understanding that some things are universal. He sees Anzac Day, for instance, as a story of sacrifice.
"I grew up with stories of the Red Army. My Grandma walked in the Long March, so I think you connect at a human level and realise the magnitude of the sacrifice ... That's not a very difficult concept to comprehend."
