CIIC: Where there are not a lot of tourists, and they can enjoy themselves alone, right?
M: Yes, yes！
CIIC：In a report, once you said, great cultures can win better understanding between each other through tourism, why you think so?
M: Because you know, you have to know the culture and people to really understand the country. Since I have the opportunity to travel in China, to an extent, China is so large that even (I) spend my whole three years of stay would not cover even most part of China. But I have the opportunity to Hangzhou which is a very beautiful city; and Chengdu, Chongqing, to Shanghai and Dalian, and a few other places; but I only stayed here for 8 months, I’m still trying to visit more interesting places, to learn more about the culture and history of those places.
CIIC: Among the cities you have been to, which impresses you most?
M: They are all different cities you know, in some places, you like certain aspects than in other cities, but on some other aspects, things will happen too. All those cities have their individual charm, so I enjoyed visiting all these places. I also went to a place called Qingyuan in Guangdong Province, which is a very quite, very small city, which we like very much. I believe there would be more opportunity for me to travel to other places when we have the time.
CIIC: Although you stayed in China only for a short period of time, but you must have some understanding about Chinese culture, my question is which part of the culture interests you most?
M: I think the best thing in Chinese culture is the friendship of the Chinese people. I’m not sure whether you would call it a culture, but it really touches us most, even those who are not able to communicate with us because of language, because I still didn’t get the chance and time to stay Chinese except for some greetings. We really get moved by Chinese friendship even those who are not prepared to help, this is the distinct character of China.
CIIC: Many foreigners think Chinese is very hard to learn, not only speaking but also writing is also a challenge, well, are you family with you in Beijing? Do they get used to the Chinese life style.
M: My wife is here, we have grown-up children, so they cannot join us but they visit us. My wife and I am very much at home now, we have no difficulties in the Chinese life style.
CIIC: My question here, you’re in china, and get the opportunity to visit many Chinese places, but for most Maldivians, they can’t, we want to know what’s their impression about China?
M: China is become a well-known country for most people everywhere in the world, so with today’s technology, you could know what’s happening in China or anywhere in this world very quickly and easily. So they are quite, or most people are very update on what’s happening in China, especially during the time when we are all looking forward to the Beijing Olympics.
CIIC: Talking about Olympics, which makes me think up of your excellent skills on Ping-Pong, and China is called the “Kingdom of Ping-Pong”, how do you feel when you arrived in China, I mean the “Kingdom of Ping-Pong”?
M: I think a lot about “Ping pong” especially after my assignment here as the ambassador. The first time I came to China during the 1970s was also to play Ping Pong. Since then, I came here to play Ping-Pong in 1994 during the Asian Games. I used to play for the national team for several years. But now I’m retired, when I came to china, I consider myself an immature, but when come back to my country, I can claim myself a good player. But in china, so many people plays so good at table-tennis. Then you find you’re at a much lower level than you expect. But I enjoy playing here, I have many friends play Ping-Pong now, we play very regularly at different places. First we went to parks, those open parks, where I went to ordinary people who play very seriously. Actually we have a group of diplomats, we play very regularly, every week in Shichahai sports school. We go there every week and play Ping-Pong. We are also organizing a very interesting tournament on June 21st , this is a tournament that I initiated, but we have also get support from the Chinese Tennis Association, which is organizing the tournament for us. Among the diplomats, this is a tournament that include team-events and individuals. We would join China to celebrate the Olympics, we want to embrace the Olympic spirit in China, to participate to show our solidarity with the Chinese people. We also have 60 players registered, and about 50 embassy teams there, so we hope this is a good event for all of us.
