CURRENT MISSION

le voyage me semble un exercice profitable. --- Montaigne

ABOUT ME

Hi, my name is DUAN Zhouwei and i am preparering my doctor degree in L’École pratique des hautes études in Paris. I speak Chinese, French and English. My general aim in life is to make me happy and in turn make the people around me happy. When i die, i can comfort myself : 'well, at least my presence didn’t make the world worse.’ My concrete aim at present is to finish my thesis (a huge challenge sometimes even a big headache). Generally i am smiling; sometimes i am a little shy; often i like talking with peoples; and always i love trees and writing letters. Well, this is me (or an ‘approximate' me because knowing yourself is really a work of lifetime. Also, there is the question of language: are you sure you express exactly what are you thinking?) Finally, thank you for reading this tedious long text.

PHILOSOPHY

Ainsi les tableaux vus de trop loin et de trop près. Il n’y a qu’un point indivisible qui soit le véritable lieu, les autres sont trop près, trop loin, trop haut ou trop bas. La perspective l’assigne dans l’art de la peintre. Mais dans la vérité et dans la morale qui l’assignera? ---Pascal

Por que estou no Couchsurfing?

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

When i finish my thesis and return home, i think i will have more time and space to host people. Would your please wait for me, one year and a half?

Interesses

When i am free, i love visiting museums because i love painting and sculptures. My favorite painters are Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Millet, Monet, Renoir, De Vinci et Giotto. I am also interested in reading,Pascal, V. Woolf, André Bazin, Roland Barthes and W. G. Sebald, etc. Furthermore, i am a big fan of the movies of Ang Lee, Jacques Tati and Vittorio de Sica. In addition, I do the jogging daily and it keeps me balanced. Another way to keep me moving is traveling and in every new city i walk from dusk till dawn because it allows me to feel closely a city (it saves money, too :)) Finally, the idea of being volunteer is attractive and during the winter of 2009 i worked in an elemantary school in the province of Guizhou, south-west of China. Before, i had thought that i knew what was poor and after arriving there i noticed that i knew nothing and how naive i was. Hope i will engage myself more after return home.

• writing
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• painting
• medicine
• volunteering

Músicas, Filmes e Livros

books: l’Usage du monde of Nicolas Bouvier, Mimésis of Érich Auerbach, La Distinction of Pierre Bourdieu, Vie et moeurs des abeilles of Karl Von Frisch, Le Jardin en mouvement of Gilles Clément, Mrs Dalloway of Virginia Woolf, Middlemarche of George Eliot, Winter’s tale of Mark Helprin, Beloved of Toni Morrison, Housekeeping of Marilynne Robinson and A la recherche du temps perdu of Proust, Don Quichotte de Cervantes, etc.
Films: Brokeback Mountain of Ang Lee, The Grandmasters of Wang Kar-wai, No country for old men of Joel and Ethan Coen, The Hours of Stephen Daldry, The Piano of Jane Campion, Spirited away of Hayao Miyazaki, Bicycle Thieves of Vittorio De Sica, Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot de Jacques Tati, etc.