first of all, i would like to explain the origin of the name, which some might wonder about. it is the literal translation of my chinese name, wu (crow) dan (red), which i use instead of my "real" name when i am in china as mine is a little difficult to pronounce for non-german speakers (at least so that i think it sounds right).

now you might wonder, how i come to have a chinese name in the first place. well, i am a graduate of chinese and politics at the university of leeds. as such, i have spent one year in tianjin (china's third largest city just south-east of beijing) on my year abroad, and have travelled to a fair few other places in the country. which is something i really enjoyed, in particular as i met some pretty nice people out there. and at the moment i am doing my austrian national service abroad in qiqihar in heilongjiang province (see my images pages for pix)

so over the past four years i have been an austrian student at a university in the uk studying chinese (and politics). there is reason to my madness. i was born in austria to one austrian father born in austria, whose parents were born in austria and germany, and one british mother born in hong kong, whose parents were born in china and the uk - both british though. i grew up bilingually speaking both english and german, though german was my primary language as i attended austrian schools. a year before graduation from high school, i spent half a year at an australian high school (yes we had kangaroos in the backyard). on the way back from there my family and i made a short trip to hong kong, my first visit to the place. when i then finally graduated from high school a few years ago, i started studying at the university of vienna - political science and sinology, as it is called there. however, i did not really enjoy the quality of teaching too much so i decided to make a move to that island.

and if you want to find out any more about me just ask me...

oh and by the way if you were wondering about the red character on each of my pages it means heart (xin) in chinese...