Welcome the new year with new resolve

Everyone who has come into contact with China must probably be musing about Spring Festival now, because it is that time of the year when more than 2 billion trips are made across the country for family reunions. Many foreigners living and working in China celebrate two "New Years" - one on Jan 1 and the other either later that month or in February.

I have completed a full zodiac circle in China. I arrived in China in 2003, the Year of the Ram, without knowing anything about the Chinese zodiac and the importance some people attach to it. In my country, Germany, we were taught little about the East. So it was only after arriving in China that I heard the Year of the Ram was a "weak year" full of bad luck.

Talking about the Year of the Ram, let us digress a bit and travel to Fudan University where I majored in Russian. The university is a silent superstar, one that has no parallel in Europe. Its unofficial campus is perhaps bigger than a Parisian suburb and houses tens of thousands of students, teachers and other university employees. Life, when I first reached Fudan University, was cheap - and although my monthly stipend of $80 got me 80 meals - twice as many as the street malatang (spicy hotpot) or chaomian (fried noodles) - I still lost 7 kilograms in the first year from over-work and exhaustion. China was not that significant as a world power.