European Link to China: by Tom Shanahan

Wow, what a great time we all had in Europe. We met such a full range of interesting and terrific people and saw parts of beautiful Europe. The people we met had such fantastic stories to share about their own personal experiences discovering China, and while it is not uncommon for foreigners to share with Rediscovering China their own experiences and stories about China from their unique foreign perspective, this was the first time we had actually left China to interview people living outside of China. I was quite interested to see if they would have offer any different takes or perspectives compared with those foreigners living in China.

We interviewed a full range of people from many different walks of life including: The Queen's Commissioner of the province of Utrecht in Holland, two dutch princes Prince Pieter Christiaan and Prince Bernard Jr. who we had the pleasure of interviewing between laps racing their muscle cars on the race track in Holland, an extremely successful businessman by the name of Aad Ouborg, the president of Agfa Healthcare Mr Christian Reinaudo, and two very talented musicians Carel Kraayenhof and Alexandria Beck. As it turned out, all these people had been to China and had first hand experiences of China one way or the other.

With the Province of Utrecht being the sister province of Guangdong in China, the Queen's commissioner of Utrecht had been fortunate enough to have made many visits to China, and he told us he believed that Holland and China have a lot to learn from each other. With Holland being able to offer technical expertise to China, and Holland in turn being able to learn from China's way of dealing with different situations. Something I believe could perhaps be best described as chinese wisdom.