Word: mandarinize
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Most Australians knew that if opposition leader Kevin Rudd was in a good mood, you could get him to say a few words in Chinese. But at a lunch in Sydney in September, he went way beyond party tricks. Welcoming Chinese President Hu Jintao, Rudd broke into fluent Mandarin. Prime Minister John Howard and Hu had just witnessed a $35 billion contract for Australia to supply natural gas to China. But it wasn't the historic deal that set news wires abuzz - it was the image of Rudd upstaging Howard and impressing his guest. Next day, Hu invited the Labor...
...direction As a Diplomat, Rudd spent eight years in Beijing; he makes much of his ability to speak Mandarin. Perhaps coincidentally, his approach to Labor doctrine resembled an Australian version of Deng Xiaoping Theory. Whether an ideology is "surnamed capitalist or surnamed socialist" is immaterial, the late Chinese leader declared. Socialism is "whatever increases the comprehensive strength of the nation...
...young age have absolute pitch, and that it's four times more common among first-year music students in Beijing than those in New York - a reflection of the fact that the Chinese are more attuned to pitch, having had to master the precise tones used in spoken Mandarin...
Chabon is playing a double game here: he's a Pulitzer winner with the verbal chops of a mandarin writing in the voice of a junk-sick 1950s pulp hack who dreams of being a Pulitzer winner. He seems to find the masquerade liberating. For once he never has to stop the action or worry about the prose being too purple or not purple enough. Gentlemen contains only trace amounts of irony. Best of all--and this is good for Chabon, who, unlike Updike, has a sentimental streak--the characters feel emotions only when they want to, and never more...
...head of equipment-leasing for GE in China. But she learned quickly that being ethnically Chinese has some disadvantages for a U.S. executive. "Customers, particularly the older ones, thought nothing of lecturing me on how I speak," says Ho, who speaks conversational but not business Mandarin. On the other hand, she skipped some of the culture shock that slams many newly arrived expats. She is comfortable enough in her Shanghai skin to scold a woman who recently jumped a long queue at Ho's neighborhood bakery. Ho says her swift adaptation to Chinese culture, along with the very American networking...