Word: mandarin
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...they will be able to transport even more. The knock-on effects of the China trade are big, too. A giant casino opened last year to cater to the Chinese tourists pouring from Mekong ferries into northern Thailand, and Sichuan restaurants crowd the Chiang Saen riverside. At local institutes, Mandarin classes have become as popular as English ones. "If you want to be successful in business here, you need to learn Mandarin," says Sittichai, a school director. So frenzied is the China trade that the Chiang Saen government is building a $63 million container port that's set to open...
...China's box office grows at a rate of over 30% per year and India is second to Hollywood in terms of the number of films produced. This year, Disney released its first project tailored for China - a cartoon shot in Mandarin; in July, Warner Brothers and Sony announced a project to build multiplexes in South Asia; and Price Waterhouse Coopers estimated that Asia's film industry would increase by 6% annually, reaching $104 billion...
...recent afternoon in this east-coast Italian city, you could hear the first snippets of dialogue from the next act of the global economy's evolving plotline. "Wo jiao Francesco," says a young Italian man, at the start of a Mandarin lesson in an office conference room. With a quick "Bravo," for Francesco, Alessandra Brezzi, a moonlighting professor of Chinese from the nearby University of Urbino, begins drilling her seven students on useful workplace vocabulary (ziliao/raw material; caiwuchu/accounting department) and proper Chinese etiquette (introduce yourself with a business card ready; never open a gift right away). Of course, these lessons...
...this Mandarin lesson is taking place at the headquarters of Benelli motorcycles. Once one of Europe's most revered bikemakers, it was also the first Italian firm to be bought outright by a Chinese company when, in October 2005, the Qianjiang Group, China's third-largest scootermaker, purchased Benelli for $24 million. At the time of the bid, Qianjiang's purchase of the storied brand from its last Italian owner was seen as another sign of the country's industrial decline, with local newspapers deriding the sale as a "disaster" and an "ugly story." Indeed Italy's manufacturing model - built...
...thing is clear: learning your partner's language always helps. Qianjiang boss Yan can now get by in Italian and engineer Michelotti often throws a few Mandarin phrases into conversation with his colleagues in Wenling. He's also begun to pick up certain words they keep repeating. Chinese Professor Brezzi explains the difference between "we should" (yinggai) and "we must" (yao). "I always hear 'yao,'" says Michelotti. That's a reminder of who's in charge...