Visiting a Chinese library (in Prague...)

I went to the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences. Precisely, to their library, to the Chinese one. You know, not a lot of resources on Chinese to be found here in Prague...Oh sure, Internet is nice, yet I was also seeking for a guidance - what should I read??? How should I learn Chinese (as a non-Sinology student...).
Apparently, the few librarians in there don't have too many visits from "outsiders". And so, I was treated with all the ceremony, the appropriate Chinese book was chosen for me; I also got an interesting idea on how to get to touch with some Chinese in Prague - to my great astonishment, there are Chinese Bohemists (as in 'Sinologists', just the language being different) in Prague!! Of course, if Sinology students from Prague go to internships to Chinese universities, it should be the other way round as well, shouldn't it. But still, an idea of a Chinese student with a major in the Czech language??? Hard to believe. Never mind, I was hinted that these people would definitely be willing to have a chat with a Czech person :D
Oh, and I have (borrowed) a pretty little Chinese book on Chinese myths - seems even I may be able to read without much difficulty (as opposed, for example, to the writings of 鲁迅, after whom the library is named (when browsing the books, it almost seemed as if the library was named after him just because he was the most frequent writer in there).
By the way, I was told that there are a lot of books even in English (and not only about China, also about other areas of interest for the Oriental Institute - a large part of Asia) and on normal topics (seemed like there was also a lot of encyclopedia-like ones).


Note: in fact, I have read, that 鲁迅 actually wrote very accessible books - at least considering his epoch.

Hudong

Ever heard about Hudong? Well, it's yet another web encyclopedia - you know, like Wikipedia.
I suppose, you have heard about Wikipedia, actually just some time ago, I would even think - "who would care about another web encyclopedia - Wikipedia rules them all!!"
But I tell you, why you perhaps may care about Hudong - actually Hudong has as many articles as there are in the English wikipedia (which is comparable, as Hudong is just monolingual.) - that is, some three million. OK, these are just official data and may be misleading, however just a quick browsing at Hudong will probably convince you, that there are many articles (even on general topics) much better (or at least longer) than the equivalent Wikipedia ones.
OK, Wikipedia is nowadays pretty well covered even in mainstream media, one would expect Hudong to be as well. Yet there is one thing I haven't mentioned yet - Hudong is in Chinese. Now what seems striking to me - who have ever heard about it here? I mean, apart from a few China aficionados. I'm not surprised little people in here are interested in Chinese encyclopedias, but actually if you are interested, you can't even get to know it exists (I found it by chance, when browsing Chinese pages).
Try searching Czech pages. Now have a look at the Wikipedia article about Hudong - almost a stub article, just by the way mentioning, Hudong has some 3000000000 articles... Just for some variety - have a look at the Hudong article about Wikipedia.
Btw there is also a Chinese edition of Wikipedia, but it's rather a desperate project. Actually, I have read an opinion column, China is so special that it deserves an encyclopedia of its own (it was phrased in the way, that Chinese shouldn't participate at Wikipedia - anyway Wikipedia is even blocked in PRC these days).
When I talk with people, and we sometimes get to me learning Chinese, they sometimes mention, often seriously, China is going to become the major world power :) No matter what you think about it, if this ever happens, we won't even notice... :(

Lan in Chinese

See the dictionary.

Chinese vacuum

真空
real emptiness = vacuum