Word: getting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cannot be done," or "No, we don't have it" -- a word foreigners learn quickly. "Too few primers," says Bi. "One hundred eighty-two students and 15 English books. Bad enough, right? But look at the books. They're about 40 years old, and boring. We can barely get by the first story...
...texts entirely, but the college entrance exams test the books' content. "They can actually ask you how exactly Marx learned English," he says. (By writing for American newspapers, it turns out.) "So we have to go through them. But we also try to come up with exercises that get to the real questions of English grammar. Now, which word do you think belongs in the blank...
Later, over lunch with a psychologist, I try connecting the phenomenal spread of television in China with the West's greatest contribution to childhood education. "What about Sesame Street?" I ask. "You must be kidding," says the psychologist. "Sesame Street is about individualism, about accepting differences. Don't you get it about Communism...
...get it, finally, when I chance on a hot seller at a bookstore in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, deep in the heart of China. Buried in A Guide to U.S.A., The Visitor's Companion, is a section titled "Individualism." A sample observation: "People in the United States generally consider self- reliance and independence as ideal personal qualities. As a consequence, most people see themselves as separate individuals, not as representatives of a family, community, or other group . . . Visitors from other countries ((read China)) sometimes view this attitude as 'selfishness...
...get the point again in Shanghai, the city called the "Paris of the East" during the Roaring Twenties; a place made famous forever when, in the 1932 film Shanghai Express, Marlene Dietrich drawled, "It too-oo-k more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." Shanghai is no longer trendy, modern or even cosmopolitan, but its streets are still tops for infant watching. Sadly, though, the toddlers I see seldom cry or laugh or even suck their thumbs. Most seem sullen. And in the beautiful Jing an Park, which used to be a cemetery before the bodies...