Sunday, July 31, 2005

good thing it's mandarin

there's an article on yahoo reporting how more americans are starting to learn chinese (mandarin) because china is becoming a world superpower both economically and politically.

excerpt: ...china's dramatic rise to near superpower status and its telling effects politically, economically and culturally are driving the interest to learn the language, experts say...

all i can say is how glad i am that they are not learning cantonese... phew! if only white people knew what i say to them in front of their faces. haha, i kid. *shaking head*

this probably means i should brush up on my mandarin, doesn't it? or more accurately, learn mandarin.

as my college chinese course TA told me, "francis, what you're speaking is cantonese. this is a mandarin course. take your cantonese outside the door. now try again... but this time, speak mandarin."

what's even more impressive is the fact that 2,400 high schools across the country are interested in offering AP Chinese when it becomes available in 2006 by the (stupid, fucked up bitch of a company) college board (according to 2004, college board survey). and most of these schools don't even offer chinese language courses now.

excerpt: ...two prominent senators [one of which is joe lieberman] have proposed legislation that authorizes 1.3 billion dollars in federal funds over five years for chinese language instruction in US schools... the bill also would increase american consular activity to support rapidly growing US businesses in china and would encourage internet cultural exchanges between chinese and american citizens...

it's interesting to see how capitalist US is buddying up with the commy bastards from china. oh how times have changed. of course, at this point, i don't think china is anywhere close to the communistic ideology of mao. it's pretty capitalistic, if anything. and maybe chinese citizens don't have much civil rights, but is that such a bad thing? just because americans don't agree with something, it doesn't make it wrong or bad.

yeah, so to all y'all crackers out there... start learning chinese. but mandarin only, please. xie xie.

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