Quote from Prof. Juha Janhunen’s oral history

“I always used to say that there are three types of China studies. One is the classical line which studies Chinese classics,…..the other type is modern China studies like social studies and sciences of modern China which is a very new type of China studies and we have not had it either in Finland but are now developing……The third line of studies is this Finnish tradition of altaic or Eurasian studies where China is included in this context of Eurasian cultures and then the focus is on the non-Han Chinese parts of China like Mongolia, Manchuria, Turkestan and Tibet. In this field we have a very good tradition in Finland; we have many scholars, many collectors and also collections. That’s what I have been involved with and that is what we can also offer to China; we can even train Chinese people in these kinds of studies. I have had PhD students from Inner Mongolia who did their PhD here on Mongolian dialects.”