Ruth Schimanowski is used to being at home in a foreign country. „From an early age, I experienced myself as a foreigner, as a guest.“ The head of the DAAD Beijing office grew up in Tanzania as a missionary’s daughter. In terms of foreign languages, she speaks Kiswahili, Swedish, French, English and, of course, Chinese. She particularly enjoys finding commonalities in cultural and linguistic differences: „In Chinese, you don’t throw pearls before swine, but you play the zither to a cow,“ she explains about idioms.