[Listen to Music] Home | Thoughts | Photos | Books | Articles | Heidelberg | Contact
Made to Stick
by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

"The problem is [when people] have been given knowledge that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge...This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-recreate our listeners' state of mind." (page 20)

Recent Photo Galleries
June 5, 2008 - through esther's eyes
Beijing buzz
We returned to Shanghai from Beijing on Monday on the night train, a fancy fast 12 hour train rivaling the TGV with all the bells and whistles like passenger slippers and toothbrushes! We discovered the capital to be a really neat city even beyond the expected buzz you could imagine any city would have gearing up towards the Olympics. It seems as if historic and cultural sites are at least partly preserved in contrast to Shanghai, where the old (read: historic) seems so often torn down to make way for skyscrapers in the race towards the future. Instead, our first trip to Beijing gave the feel of fairly civil cohabiting old and new, cultural heritage and modernity.

Our legs held out to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (pictured here before we got busted for taking a picture in front of that guard). It was like walking into your favorite history book. The Great Wall was even more incredible though. We realized something was up when young people at the back of the tour bus began cheering when we got on. It turned out to be a Chinese tour with two foreigners straining to understand the tour guide and namely why in the world we would be eating for free with the rest of the bus passengers, why we would be visiting Ming Tombs and a Jade factory when we’d bought simple tickets for the Wall. Finally, 2 hours north of Beijing we arrived at the beginning of the spectacular 10’000km Great Wall of China - a remarkable site that is well worth visiting. Breath-taking too to see rolling hills and to breathe in some quasi mountainous air.



Our real reason for visiting the capital city however, was not to go sight-seeing at all. Our initial reason was to visit our friends and genial hosts Marcus and Julia and to spend time with them. We had fantastic time with them and their ministry and watching the way they love on people so very well. Gave us a few ideas. A delight too, to share in Marcus’ birthday hot-pot meal and to play with so many parentless children.

Something tells me we’ll go back soon..



I’ll have to end the post here because we’re off to the station to catch the 22 hour train ride to Chinese southern province of Guangxi to visit the apparently incredible karst peaks of Yángshuò. Monday is a national holiday (Dragon Boat Festival) so we figured it was a great time to do another longer weekend trip. This time, though longer, our train ride is bound to be a bit more fun with Settler-addict train-compartment-roomies Chris & Corrie..

(Oh, and by the way, just as a teaser, something (someone) tells me our spiffy new website is in the making. Won’t be long until it’s up now..)


More of Our Thoughts