Let her sleep. For when she wakes, she will shake the world.［Napoleon Bonaparte, around 1810］
China Shakes the World. [James Kynge, 2006]
China
She has been my object of affection since late 1999. it was actually her written language that attracted me in the first place. those beautifully crafted characters, so alien to our ways of expressing thoughts in words. without much knowing about the country and its people I left for China in fall 2000 to teach English and German in a remote Northern town about the size of Vienna, but with the feeling of an industrial suburb of the later. I soon realized that I had entered a different universe, a country like a continent, a country that encompasses as many aspects as Europe does in the perspective of a Chinese visitor. By trying to understand, I got stuck and I still am.
Completing a bachelor degree in Far East Asian Studies at the university of Vienna in 2005, did add some more aspects to the picture that I already had about her, but to be honest, China is not something that can be understood by studying books abroad. You gotta be there, you gotta feel and breath her every day. I guess that holds true for every culture and every language that one wants to conquer, aspires to master. China though, and with her some other Far Eastern cultures are so different from my European socialization - in every aspect - that being there attains a new quality. If I wouldn‘t be in China, I would lose touch with her in a few months, I would slip back in a Western life style within a few weeks. My competence in regard to China is therefore to a certain extent based on the fact that I am here - in China.
My legal profession merged with my interest in China in the area of intellectual property and technology law, a topic that became really hot in the late 90s and still is. My interest in environmental protection somehow grew in China, because I saw during my first years pollution on a massive scale, and I wanted to do my part in helping to save this part of the world. I ended up as a juris doctorate researcher with The Nature Conservancy in Yunnan, working on a comparative study of Austrian an Chinese national park law. But my interest in China has always been on a much wider basis. If I would have to pinpoint it, I would say it is the different view that the Chinese culture offers on life, on our existence as human beings. A lot of sociological and philosophical dark matter has been shed light on by trying to understand how things are dealt with in the yellow Orient. China puts most topics into a different perspective; and that‘s an extremely enriching quality that I am grateful for having encountered - I wouldn't mind though if she were still a bit more sleepy and less shaking the world.
I write a second blog on her on mycountryandmypeople.org
Completing a bachelor degree in Far East Asian Studies at the university of Vienna in 2005, did add some more aspects to the picture that I already had about her, but to be honest, China is not something that can be understood by studying books abroad. You gotta be there, you gotta feel and breath her every day. I guess that holds true for every culture and every language that one wants to conquer, aspires to master. China though, and with her some other Far Eastern cultures are so different from my European socialization - in every aspect - that being there attains a new quality. If I wouldn‘t be in China, I would lose touch with her in a few months, I would slip back in a Western life style within a few weeks. My competence in regard to China is therefore to a certain extent based on the fact that I am here - in China.
My legal profession merged with my interest in China in the area of intellectual property and technology law, a topic that became really hot in the late 90s and still is. My interest in environmental protection somehow grew in China, because I saw during my first years pollution on a massive scale, and I wanted to do my part in helping to save this part of the world. I ended up as a juris doctorate researcher with The Nature Conservancy in Yunnan, working on a comparative study of Austrian an Chinese national park law. But my interest in China has always been on a much wider basis. If I would have to pinpoint it, I would say it is the different view that the Chinese culture offers on life, on our existence as human beings. A lot of sociological and philosophical dark matter has been shed light on by trying to understand how things are dealt with in the yellow Orient. China puts most topics into a different perspective; and that‘s an extremely enriching quality that I am grateful for having encountered - I wouldn't mind though if she were still a bit more sleepy and less shaking the world.
I write a second blog on her on mycountryandmypeople.org