I'm a wikipedia newbie. I came here following a link from the Nupedia page and found it to be a much better place for me, since I haven't got a Ph.D. yet. Despite my user name, I'm not Chinese but German (my proper name is Max Schäfer; the user name is my Mandarin name given to me by my Chinese teacher). I've graduated from highschool one year ago (to be precise: I passed the German "Abitur"); at the moment I'm serving out my time in community service and therefore I've got plenty of time. I would like to use this time to contribute to wikipedia a lot, but
Since I'm German, my English certainly is not the best one ever seen, so if you're an English native speaker please review my articles and check spelling and expression! Although my contributions have all been China related so far (the Chinese language and Mandarin articles are my fault ;-), I'm not really a China expert: I've only had four years of Mandarin lessons in school, so if you're a Chinese native speaker, please review these articles, too, and correct the (presumably numerous) mistakes!
Oh, and if you want to tell me what a stupid dork I am and don't want to do so publicly, this is my email address!
Greetings. I'm impressed with your Chinese history page; I wonder if you're at all familiar with Chinese film? Film is a pet area of mine, and I'm trying to fill it out but I can think of exactly 2 Chinese directors (Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee) and have seen exactly 2 films by each, though all four knocked my socks off (Da hong deng long gao gao gua, Huozhe, Wo hu cang long better known as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to the western world, and The Ice Storm.) So with only three of the four Chinese films being in Chinese, I'm hardly an expert. ;-) Also I'd love to have your help with the German film page for similar reasons (let me see... Herzog, Lang, Fassbinder... Wenders... none of whom I'm familiar with really....) If you're not interested or don't have time, I won't take offense; I recognize that your work on history is probably of greater lasting interest. :-) --Koyaanis Qatsi
Hmmm, if you've seen four Chinese films so far, you've seen four more than me... When in China I simply didn't find time to go to the cinema and I don't want to see Chinese films in a German cinema in German translation -- it simply wouldn't be the right thing, you know? But in autumn I'm going to move to Beijing for one year, and if I should become an expert on Chinese film in this time, I'd be glad to fill in the gaps!
No no, they were in translation (subtitled, not with the horrible overdubbing). I've since seen Ju Dou, also subtitled; I'll wager that Zhang Yimou is recognized as a master before it's over. I'd be interested to see what you have to say, but if I were going to Beijing for a year, you probably wouldn't find me in a movie theater. :-) --Koyaanis Qatsi