Here is the last of the interviews I filmed in Oxford, this time with the cathedral of Merton College in the background. (Free tip: if you conduct an interview in front of a cathedral, time it so the bells DON’T strike the hour for five minutes right when your interviewee is warming up).
Dr James Martin, author of The Meaning of the Twentieth Century, and founder of Oxford’s James Martin 21st Century School (got it yet? here is a guy who likes to think about the 21st century) talks about the bigger picture impacts the rise of China will have on our fragile world in … yes, the 21st century.
After the jump is a coda in which he describes his first visit to China in the 80s, invited by Tsinghua University in Beijing to see first-hand the ‘awful, clumsy, Communist corporations’ of the time. A couple of decades on, and I’m writing from the glistening technology company hub of China, Beijing’s Haidian district: quick stuff, change, when money is an incentive.
Mandarin translations for both (think of it as a late Christmas present?).
Bye for 2008, see you in 2009!
Here is the coda:
Alec Ash
I studied Mandarin in Beijing, where I began writing this blog in the Olympic summer of 2008