Gineke ten Holt

My new language partner, Ning Ding, is the president of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars in the Netherlands. She asked my to give a talk about our journey to China for new Chinese students during the introduction activities of Hanze University (IBS). It would be interesting for them to hear the impressions of Dutch people visiting China for the first time. I, of course, was happy to oblige. I held a 30-minute talk, focusing not on the tourist highlights (with which they were no doubt already familiar), but on typical things or habits that struck us as odd, funny, or remarkable at the time. In the end, I think it was a success. And if nothing else, I at least got to warn them about Dutch Chinese food: don't expect it to be like actual food in China. (In our three months there, we have tasted nothing that was anything like what we call 'Chinese food' here :-)