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Be a Chinese patriot and subscribe to the dreary PLA Daily
Last week I read an hilarious article on the front page of the PLA Daily (translation follows):
Notice from the General Political Department orders the PLA and Armed Police to:
Ensure the strict following of standards by subscribing to next year's PLA Daily
I have heard that subscribing to the main national newspapers is compulsory. No wonder why Chinese 'journalists' are so slack. |
Posted: 4:23 PM, 22/11/2006 in ChinaShare on Facebook |
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The English-language CCCTV
| News is just as dour. But look at it this way, at least China's making a huge attempt to get English to be closer to being mainstream in its population. It's going to take some time since, as you know, each Province has its own dialect and putonghua isn't always the lingua franca. Given the speed with which China does things these days, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect English to be widely spoken in China within a generation - at least in commerce. |
Posted by Ninja at 5:52 PM, 22/11/2006 |
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English learning
I'm just not sure how much substance is behind all this news of China striving to learn English. A few years back, the foreign media reported that Beijing taxi drivers were studying English in preparation for the Olympic Games. I've now lived in Beijing for over three years and I've only met one taxi driver who could speak English.
Chinese people will tell you that they started learning English since primary school. But I am suspicious about the teaching quality - it seems only people who studied English as their major at university are fluent in English.
I believe that learning another language is a positive thing because it allows you to understand more about other cultures. I reckon Chinese and Arabic should be compulsory at Australian high schools because hopefully this would lessen the gap between Australia and two of the most important cultures in the world.
Unfortunately, learning English from an early age doesn't seem to make it any easier for Chinese to feel at ease with foreigners. It may be because English is more utilitarian and less associated with one particular culture. However, when the majority of Chinese speak to a foreigner in English, they are doing it mostly for superficial communications. When they have anything important to say, they invariably revert back to Chinese, even if the foreigner cannot understand what's being said. I hope more foreigners can learn Chinese and crack China's code because relying on Chinese people to learn English is unreliable. |
Posted by zhangbohan at 4:38 PM, 24/11/2006 |
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