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An interesting fact I learned recently: Xi Jinping is huge Goethe fan.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n11/edward-luttwak/goeth...

Yes. Apparently there are very few languages in which a complete edition of Goethe's opus is available, and Chinese is one of them. Thanks to Xi Jinping.

Related: China looks to the Western Classics.[1] Apparently if you are looking for a professorship now, you might need to go East to go West.

[1] https://supchina.com/2022/01/13/china-looks-to-the-western-c...

Of course, admiring German classic is something of a necessary prerequisite for Chinese career bigwigs.Must have something to do with Hegel and Marx.

It has nothing to do with Hegel and Marx in this case, if you read the article. Around the time of the Cultural Revolution, Xi was banished to "a miserably poor mountain village", where the only book available was Goethe's Faust, which he reread until he knew it by heart.

Nice. How come, there was a German classic laying around and not the Dream of the Red Chamber?

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