I spend most of my time this year in China – My family has made an important decision to move to China. Things has being crazy for the last couple of months with the logistics but we finally have our first Christmas over here.
The decision is a combination of my work, but more importantly how I see the world developed in the next decade or two. Out of the 4 fastest growing economy — Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC), I think I can fit into China.
One thing I have certainly improved is my Chinese since moving over here, or at least my wife (who is a Chinese teacher) say so. Nevertheless, I think the depth of Chinese I can command is still pretty far from norm conversation.
For example, I was having tea in Beijing several weeks ago when a friend asked me why I could not get along with another certain mutual person. I struggled to find the right words to expressed in Chinese. When she got it, she just said “君子合而不同小人同而不合*”.
Just 12 words explained what I tried to do in the last 5 mins. Chinese is an amazing language — it contain far more “information” per word than English if you know how to use it properly.
* “君子合而不同小人同而不合” is a saying by an ancient Chinese philosopher known as Confucius record in the “The Analect”.
