GLOBALink | Australian scholar's deep bond with China spanning half a century

  Australian sociologist David Goodman could always recall the newspaper which was used to wrap up a lunch of fish and chips half a century ago from a Chinese restaurant in Britain, saying that the coincident suggested his connection with China was "meant to be."

   During the past 40 years, he lived in many Chinese cities, from Suzhou in the east to Lanzhou in the northwest, from Taiyuan in the north to Chengdu in the southwest.

   "I like to see different parts of China," he said in an interview with Xinhua, adding that the scenery is breathtaking and people are kind.

   Goodman, 74, said he was from a left-wing family in Britain, where he had relatives who were communists.

   He remembered that in the 1960s when he studied in the University of Manchester, he once bought lunch from a Chinese restaurant, finding that the fish and chips were wrapped up in the Chinese newspaper Wen Wei Po. He could not read Chinese characters at that time, but was fascinated by the pictures on it.

   As an undergraduate student, he specialized in Chinese policy. "I got more and more interested and by the time I finished, I decided I had to go to China and do a PhD on China."

   Goodman first visited China in 1976. "It fascinated me. Many things were different from what I expected: the range of different kinds of people, the kindness of people," he said.

   After learning Mandarin in the Beijing Language and Culture University, then known as the Beijing Language Institute, he studied economics at the Peking University.

   "It was very good, great fun. And I learned a lot," he said.

   He then went back to teach in Britain before an opportunity found him: the University of Newcastle started an exchange program with a university in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi in north China, which brought him to the city.

   "That began the love affair with Shanxi," Goodman said. He did a lot of research in Shanxi over the years and wrote books about it. He wrote not only about the contemporary development, but about the coal-rich province during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in the 1930s and 40s, and the rise of the Communist Party of China.

   The professor moved to Australia in 1987, but his love for China continued.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service