In the years when my intellectual hunger seemed insatiable, I read many books on philosophy: General introductions like The History of Philosophy by Hans Joachim Störig, but also the works of the great thinkers themselves. My favourite philosopher was Friedrich Nietzsche. His poetic way of writing, and surprising use of metaphors, made his thinking more accessible than the often elaborately-phrased thoughts of Kant and Hegel. In Nietzsche's writing, fiction and philosophy seemed to merge effortlessly. Growing older, I am less susceptible to the charms of the ‘Philosopher with the Hammer’, but one of his observations has guided me through the years: ‘It (i.e. philosophy) always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself… In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS…’

What are my ‘images’ of China? Which ‘morality’ has shaped those images? For ten years I have studied sinology at Leiden University. I have been a China expert at the ministry of Economic Affairs, and from 1985 I lived for twenty years in Beijing: First as a banker, then as a businessman. I have travelled through all the provinces and autonomous regions of this continental state; I slept in creaky tents, dirty guesthouses and five-star hotels. I have climbed the huge mountains of Tibet and swam in the Li river, which shaped the surreal Karst mountains of Southern China which have inspired countless Chinese painters. Observing carefully, I have experienced China to the bone, but as a Sinologist I have also tried to make intellectual sense of what I saw. I read hundreds of books and thousands of articles; yet never reached the point that I fully came to understand the shapeless mass of what is being called ‘China’. By studying sinology, I have been put on a road of discovery that knows no end.