One of them is Ts'ao Yung-ho, the only Chinese specialist in the history of Taiwan who can read early Dutch, and another is Nakamura Takashi, an authority on history at Japan's Tenri University, who laments the fact that fewer and fewer students in Japan these days are going in for rangaku, or "Dutch studies."
因為頭髮花白，略為削瘦的這一位，是目前台灣唯一能讀古代荷蘭文的台灣史專家曹永和；在他身邊體型稍胖的，則是日本天理大學台灣史權威中村孝志。在這位老教授的口中，日本的「和蘭學」學生，「也愈來愈少嘍」，語氣中顯然帶著幾分無奈。