China 2008 Easter Experience December 7, 2007

The Department for Innovation and Universities (DIUS) has recently given its okay for a China 2008 Easter experience, a three-week trip for 200 students at English universities to Beijing this coming Easter. As of now, there is no information available on the DIUS website nor at the Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS) of Manchester University. [...]

The smallest unit of the economy: the human August 20, 2007

This is the story of a human, of his worries and aspirations, of his fears and dreams. This article is inspired by a section in the business magazine Brand Eins, in which, next to the ‘soft’ interview, ‘hard’ raw economic data are given, such as what the person makes and some indices of what basic [...]

Heading home August 6, 2007

I have been trying to keep a blog during my time in Beijing but I have managed only to post some notes. That is because there was simply just too many things one should do while in Beijing rather than sitting in front of a computer screen. In addition, there were some technical and some [...]

A short intro into early Chinese history August 2, 2007

Most foreigners who come to China have a superficial knowledge of the country and its people. Besides some important dates such as 1927, 1949 and 1989, outsiders usually do not know much about early Chinese history. Much of the what people happen to know about China falls under the category of selective perception. One has [...]

A day at Beihai Park July 30, 2007

After getting up and eating at a restaurant with Ben, Martin and my roommate Rich, we decided to go to Beihai Park, and then later on to the Yashau Market. After rounding up some more people, we walked the one and a half hours to the park. It has an botanical are with some ponds [...]

Arrival, Surprises and a Tea Garden July 30, 2007

Flying from London Heath-row, over Frankfurt, I arrived on Thursday, July 19 2007 at 8:30 a.m. at Beijing Capital airport. There I was welcomed by a Chinese student from Beijing Normal University. After waiting a bit for some other students to arrive, we then were driven to our hotel “Tong Chun Yuan Hotel”, which is [...]

Notes from Beijing July 25, 2007

In this blog I will be keeping notes and writing down impressions from my journey into contemporary China. I am here in Beijing with another 99 students for 3 weeks on the UK government’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (i.e. the former DfES) “China Summer School Programme 2007″. On our stay here we will [...]