Source: Xinhua

12-04-2008 16:08

Thirty years of reform and opening up to the outside world have brought about freedom and diversity as well as new challenges to China, a Dutch Sinologist told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"The changes in the past 30 years in such a vast country with such a huge population are truly unprecedented in the world," said Maghiel van Crevel in fluent Mandarin.

Van Crevel, dean of the Sinologist Institute at Leiden University of the Netherlands, has witnessed the dramatic changes in the past 20 years in China.

He studied Chinese at China's prestigious Peking University between 1986 and 1987, and has been visiting China on a regular basis since then, giving lectures and doing research in China.

The culture shock he got upon his first arrival in Beijing was the shortage of almost everything, he recalled. Van Crevel had to share a poorly equipped dorm with several other international students, at the sacrifice of privacy, which he had enjoyed in the Netherlands.

The whole building had one telephone, so the concierge had to shout each time to get the attention of the person wanted on the phone, he recalled with a smile.

"As a matter of fact, the international students had much better housing conditions than the Chinese students. I also visited homes of several Chinese friends. Their housing conditions were even poorer -- one could barely turn around in the kitchen."