Building a bridge across cultures

Carsten Krause, 40, the director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Hamburg in Germany, is more than happy to renew his five-year contract with the institute.

"Promoting cultural communication is an interesting job," says Krause in fluent Chinese. "The Confucius Institute is more like my kid, a 5-year-old who has started kindergarten but doesn't need breastfeeding anymore," he adds.

Krause graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Culture, at the University of Hamburg, with a PhD, in 2001.