Dear friends of the Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasty Studies, Greetings! Hope you and your loved ones are coping well in the current upheaval. In my capacity as the secretary of the Society, please allow me to introduce a new member, Mr. Jeff De Kleijn. Please see his self introduction below. Welcome to the Society, Jeff! "In 1992 I started my study of Sinology in Leiden under well-known European Sinologists like Kristofer Schipper and Wilt Idema. In 1994 I moved to China for the first time, where I studied at the Beijing Language and Culture University until 1996. After completing my master’s degree in Sinology in Leiden, I was admitted in the PhD program at SOAS in London and spent many hours in their beautiful library. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances I had to place my research project on hold. Sometime later I moved back to China and spent 15 consecutive years in Chinese societies. During these years I developed an interest in analytical-psychology and the study of human consciousness. My interest in China also moved from modern China and its political economy to dynastic China. At one point, my attention was drawn to a European ruin. I searched many sources, but never identified the buildings. Until a few years later, when I accidentally found a photograph of the ruin. It was located in the northern black forest in Germany, and turned out to be an 11th century Benedictine monastery. After a visit to the monastery I started to investigate. I contacted local scholars and artists and uncovered a meaningful story which occurred during the Salian dynasty. During these years I was also thinking and studying much about synthesis in human experience, including that of the two cultural roots of my own being, China and Europe. Having one foot firmly placed in the Chinese cultural space, and the other on the European soil, the misunderstandings between those two expressions of humanity affect me in the deepest possible way. An important focus of my study is thus to explore the Chinese and European perspectives of human experience and clarify the areas of synthesis. The spark of curiosity provided by the German monastery set my focus firmly in the 11th century, where over the years I found many treasures and progressed much in understanding. My field of interest is therefore the comparative medieval history between the Song and Salian dynastic periods from a perspective of human consciousness. A study I am working on at the moment, supported by the VUB in Brussels, deals with the differences in the representations of the human body in the Salian and Song dynasties." Yours sincerely, Ya Zuo