CURRENT MISSION

crawling along the Chinese-North Korean frontier

ABOUT ME

Flexibility is a key concept in practice in my life; crooked roads lead to the self; eager to break out of old selves and morph continually into something/someone new. Acquiring skills and life experiences to share. I love writing and am very happy with a pile of books and a couple of dictionaries, a steaming cafe, a wide-mouthed pen and a cahier d'exercise or a notebook.

PHILOSOPHY

I think my idea here is to incorporate North Korea eventually into the couchsurfing community! It's going to take a while, but if you want to conspire, I am ready.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

HOSTING COUCHSURFERS; finally surfed myself in Paris with the couchsurfing guru Ken Lin and had wonderful hosts in Berlin as well

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Hosted quite a few surfers in the Chinese district of Seattle, surfed in Paris and Berlin.

Interests

Cello, hip hop, North Korea, French culture, Chinese communism, musical diplomacy, prose construction, footnotes, poetry, letters of Richard Wagner, Chinese-French dictionaries, finding ways to do my homework in Taco Time for class at Alliance Francaise.

• culture
• writing
• books
• poetry
• sketching
• exercise
• drawing
• history
• lakes

Music, Movies, and Books

John Dower; Quebecois hip hop; Chinese revolutionary music; North Korean mass games/gymnastics; Dalcroze eurhythmics

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

climb Mount Paektu on North Korean border; bicycling thro Berlin on an ancient steed; taking trains across North America; Montreal; sudden intuition of greatness of French culture; months in Beijing living near Mongol-era lakes...

Teach, Learn, Share

I have a Ph.D. in Chinese history which means that I specialize in MAO and Chinese revolutionary culture, China's relationship with Japan, relationship with North Korea, spend time on the borders of these countries. New interests in European-Chinese interaction, and in learning French. My German is OK and I enjoy speaking in that language and anything Chinese is usually a good spark to conversation or a great meal! Korean things are another area I enjoy publishing about and researching, but as a means of getting closer to actual experience. I enjoy learning at any time and am happiest if we can exchange documents and do some translations or some writing together in a cafe where we sort of immerse into the written language (or do some drawing and sketching) and then emerge some time later to talk after intense focus on something creative.

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