User:WestNab

A brief introduction ... I have a BA (Ebor) in Chemistry. I still find it a fascinating subject, but didn't work in that field for long. I was more interested in sustainable organic farming and egalitarian work. I worked on a small organic farm for a couple of years in the early 1980s. I was then a member of a worker's co-op, living together at Lifespan in the small village of Townhead, near Dunford Bridge, Barnsley, South Yorkshire. We made a living from printing and publishing and grew some of our own food, at 1,000 feet up on a Yorkshire moor. Two of my 3 children were born while we lived there. I then worked in IT at the University of Huddersfield and at Greenhead College (Huddersfield). I am a keen amateur musician, playing guitar and singing. I am strongly influenced by the early guitar blues recordings of the 1920s and 1930s and later. I have an interest in China and its history. I think it started with a fascination with a thriving culture that grew without much influence from European powers until the mid-19th century. It became even more interesting to me after I lived in a commune in England and could compare and contrast some aspects of an intentional community in a capitalist country with some aspects of communes in China, in "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Around about 1990, I took up the hobby of collecting stamps of China, which has furthered stimulated my understanding of the country and its history.