It wasn't the first time for Michael Crook to have the honor of being a VIP foreign guest at China's National Day celebrations.

But he never imagined being a host when the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of New China's founding yesterday.

He was one of the 181 foreigners from 53 countries who joined yesterday's parade. He was one of the 26 expats on the float.

It was the first time for the procession to include a formation of foreigners - a signal of China's increasing openness to the outside world.

Crook, a Briton born in China who runs an international school in Beijing, says in fluent Chinese: "I am excited when invited to take part in the parade for such a special day in China.

"I used to be an audience member, but today I am part of it. It's once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

He says he believes the inclusion of foreigners demonstrates China's cosmopolitan attitude.

"I felt excited about swapping roles, going from being a guest to becoming a participant in the parade," he tells China Daily.

"I still remember as a child in the 1950s watching the country's military inspection at a review stand alongside the Tian'anmen Rostrum.

"The bonfire on a big day like that was always beautiful, and I always ran off the review stand to purchase the little silk parachute after bonfire."

Born in Beijing in 1951, Crook grew up in the capital's hutong alleys. Mandarin is his mother tongue.

And while he has a foreign face, he inherited his parents' love and passion for China. At age 8, he moved to England and eventually completed his university studies at Queen Mary University of London.

Crook is a co-founder of the Western Academy of Beijing (WAB), an English-based international school for children ages 3 to 18.

He has kept a low profile, and his colleagues consider him a good educator who can speak fluent Chinese.

However, the spirit of Gong He (or Gung Ho, literally meaning, "work together") - one of the five core values that guides his school's decision-making - reminds visitors that his family's legendary life is so closely tied to China.

Crook's link to the Gung Ho movement is his mother, Isabel, and his late father, David.

The daughter of a Canadian missionary, Isabel was born in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, in 1915. She returned to Canada to complete her education and returned to China in the late 1930s.

While conducting anthropological and sociological research in China, Isabel met David Crook, a member of the British Communist Party who volunteered to fight with the anti-fascist International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

The Gung Ho movement later formed the foundation of the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (ICCIC), which recently celebrated its 70th anniversary with one of its founders in attendance.

Isabel Crook, now 94, was a driving force of the movement. She later became a consultant of ICCIC and a passionate promoter of a cooperative economy in China. Her son Michael, 58, is now vice-chairman of the organization and advocates a larger cooperative sector in China.

The Gung Ho movement was initiated in Shanghai by New Zealander Rewi Alley and American writer Edgar Snow in 1937. It organized refugees and unemployed workers to take hold of the means of production to support China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).

Cooperatives were organized throughout unoccupied China, with about 30,000 people in 3,000 cooperatives at the movement's peak in 1941.