I’m now in Nanjing, living in a dormitory room on the Nanjing Normal University campus. Earlier this week I registered, took a placement test, and walked around to find the essentials like cheap street food, wireless internet, and the nearest Wal-Mart and Carrefour. I also showed a couple students with limited Chinese who just stepped off the plane around and helped them pick up all kinds of stuff.
I thought the placement test was pretty easy. Each section – grammar, vocabulary, and reading – got progressively more difficult but I was pretty confident of my answers on even the most difficult questions. And I skipped ahead to do the last section, an essay, first to make sure I had time to write a lot.
I was shocked to learn the next day that I was placed into a class at the low end of year three; in other words, a fifth semester course for students who have taken two years of Chinese. I was pretty surprised because I have only spent three semesters teaching in China while studying on my own (studying only year one level books). I took a Chinese class last year for all of one and a half months.
It turns out the placement test isn’t very good at measuring anything beyond the very beginner level and somehow my exam was interpreted as that of a third year student. I’m pretty good at taking language exams now and I prepared and tried as hard as I could. As soon as I bought the books for that level (advanced writing, ancient Chinese, modern literature) I realized it was way beyond my level and I switched to year two. The course involves eight classes a week of speaking, five classes of listening, and three classes of writing, all at the intermediate level. There’s also four classes of newspaper reading, two classes of business Chinese, and three classes of Chinese for tourism each week. The level of the textbooks and the coursework still seem pretty challenging, but doable. Certainly a better fit than fifth semester ancient Chinese.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Charity in China
“In the United States, [charitable] giving represents about 2.1 percent of gross domestic product; in China, it's closer to 0.35 percent.”
The movie star Jet Li, among others, is trying to expand philanthropy in China, where civil society is much smaller and less active than in western countries. Charitable giving was one of the silver linings in the Sichuan earthquake last May. The natural disaster triggered a flood of donations from people around the country. For the wealthy urban residents and corporations who contributed large sums of money, it was a significant development because private philanthropy had been almost non-existent before then.
The movie star Jet Li, among others, is trying to expand philanthropy in China, where civil society is much smaller and less active than in western countries. Charitable giving was one of the silver linings in the Sichuan earthquake last May. The natural disaster triggered a flood of donations from people around the country. For the wealthy urban residents and corporations who contributed large sums of money, it was a significant development because private philanthropy had been almost non-existent before then.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Chinese New Year pictures
These pictures from the Boston Globe are much better than my pictures of the Chinese New Year. Some of the celebrations, including fireworks, incense, red lanterns and feasts with family, are shown in these pictures from across China and in Chinese communities around the world.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Freedom of information
The satellite box in my house, which was out of service for about half a year, was fixed the other day. We now have some good English channels that are broadcast in many Asian and European countries, such as CNN International, the BBC, and Sky Sports, and some American stations like ESPN, HBO, Discovery, and National Geographic. Satellite TV outside of hotels and other specially designated places is illegal in China, but anyone can easily get set up with satellite service from the Philippines, so we get several Filipino channels also. It’s way better than Chinese TV, which is a lot of unwatcheable Chinese programs and news (soap operas, old war movies, and 10 minute cycles of news on endless repeat), and one English channel (cooking shows and cheery news clips on repeat), and some of the movies are highly censored for sex and violence and worse, some of the news is censored for anything that is anti-China.
So it’s not hard for a Chinese person to get free access to movies and news on television but its mostly in English, in addition to a few channels in other Asian languages, and one each in French and German. It’s the same for the internet; a good number of Chinese websites are blocked, but it seems that 99% of English websites are accessible, so I rarely have a problem surfing online.
The social networking tools on Facebook are facilitating a youth political movement in Egypt. The U.S. State Department is following social networking sites and learning how they can play a role in democratization.
I thought how young people are using Facebook and the internet to organize and create a political movement in Egypt was pretty cool. Facebook played a role in last year’s elections in the U.S. as every candidate had a profile in addition to online fundraising and organization. Obama’s website, myBarack.com, was a full featured social networking site and certainly helped get his younger supporters more involved and organized.
Facebook is catching on among young people here, and there is a Chinese site, xiaonei.com, for high school and university students, and it is almost exactly like Facebook. I don’t know how much political organizing or discussion happens on social networking sites like Facebook in China, but blogs and chat rooms have been used for free expression for years and are probably more effective because they're anonymous, unlike social networking sites where the point is to explicitly identify yourself in your profile. Social networking sites are not only less private but also less fluid than blogs, forums, and chatrooms, which are easy to recreate or relocate if blocked, whereas networking sites are a fixed website and only are useful if they have a critical number of users.
It seems that a lot of good things will come out of the growing access to communication tools like cell phones and the internet in the struggles to expand wealth, knowledge, and democratic and transparent governance.
So it’s not hard for a Chinese person to get free access to movies and news on television but its mostly in English, in addition to a few channels in other Asian languages, and one each in French and German. It’s the same for the internet; a good number of Chinese websites are blocked, but it seems that 99% of English websites are accessible, so I rarely have a problem surfing online.
The social networking tools on Facebook are facilitating a youth political movement in Egypt. The U.S. State Department is following social networking sites and learning how they can play a role in democratization.
I thought how young people are using Facebook and the internet to organize and create a political movement in Egypt was pretty cool. Facebook played a role in last year’s elections in the U.S. as every candidate had a profile in addition to online fundraising and organization. Obama’s website, myBarack.com, was a full featured social networking site and certainly helped get his younger supporters more involved and organized.
Facebook is catching on among young people here, and there is a Chinese site, xiaonei.com, for high school and university students, and it is almost exactly like Facebook. I don’t know how much political organizing or discussion happens on social networking sites like Facebook in China, but blogs and chat rooms have been used for free expression for years and are probably more effective because they're anonymous, unlike social networking sites where the point is to explicitly identify yourself in your profile. Social networking sites are not only less private but also less fluid than blogs, forums, and chatrooms, which are easy to recreate or relocate if blocked, whereas networking sites are a fixed website and only are useful if they have a critical number of users.
It seems that a lot of good things will come out of the growing access to communication tools like cell phones and the internet in the struggles to expand wealth, knowledge, and democratic and transparent governance.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Economic crises and opportunities
The United States has been careful to never formally contend that China is manipulating its currency to make its exports artificially cheaper, so when the new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made such a statement during his confirmation process, it caused a bit of tension.
The People’s Bank of China “manages” the value of the yuan on the foreign exchange market by forcing domestic banks and companies to “surrender” much of the foreign currency that they take in through exports. They are given yuan in return and the People’s Bank of China accumulates about $1 billion a day through this process. The result is that there’s a larger supply of yuan, thus an artificially lower value compared to foreign currencies. Normally a high demand for exports causes the value of a country’s currency to go up as foreigners buy the currency to buy goods. A lower exchange rate means exports are cheaper, which is the rationale behind the managed exchange rate (though it makes imported goods more expensive). For a more detailed explanation, see James Fallows’s The $1.4 Trillion Dollar Question.
The yuan was pegged at about 8.3 per US dollar until it was allowed to gradually appreciate beginning in the second half of 2005. It now stands at 6.84 yuan to the dollar, after its value depreciated relative to the dollar for the first time briefly last fall, when the Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Fannie Mae troubles caused the dollar to rise and most currencies of developing economies to fall. Economists say that the value of the yuan, if allowed to float freely, would be around 5.5 yuan to the dollar.
(from FT.com)
While there may be disagreement on floating versus managed exchange rates, what effect the undervalued yuan has, and how much China should influence the dollar-yuan exchange, there are a few common points between the two countries. Both governments are implementing huge economic stimulus spending, including funds to expand infrastructure and to alleviate unemployment and falling demand.
And both are pursuing more wide reaching stimulus programs and health care reform. Some are even calling the U.S. bailout “socialism with American characteristics.”
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is in Europe for the World Economic forum and visits with leaders in several countries. The article sites the dour mood during this year’s Lunar New Year holiday. Government estimates show that of the roughly “130 million Chinese migrants who crossed provincial lines for work, 20 percent to 30 percent will find themselves jobless after the holiday.”
Layoffs are up and salary raises and bonuses are vanishing. Recent and soon-to-be college graduates are having a difficult time finding jobs.
This may be exacerbating a recent trend of a growing divide between rural and urban incomes.
“City dwellers earned an average annual income of 15,800 yuan ($2,300) a year in 2008... The average rural income was 4,700 yuan (about $690),” which is a ratio of 3.36 to 1. I’d imagine it’s much lower than that in the United States.
And that is a drastic change in the last several decades. Only 30 years ago, China had one of the most equal income distributions of any country, and now it’s one of the most unequal countries in the world. I happened to read a 2002 speech by Nicholas Lardy, an American economist and an expert on China, and it had some relevant points on the potential crisis posed by high levels of inequality during an economic downturn.
How the economic crisis affects political stability in China and what domestic policy changes come out of it will all be interesting developments to watch. The government has already promised to provide nearly universal health care coverage within three years, not to mention large investments in transportation and education. The health care program was conceived, in part, to induce more consumer spending. Savings rates are really high, around 40%, because of the lack of pensions and private health care insurance. Another way to look at it – in China, 35% of the economy is consumer spending, compared to 70% in the United States, so the high savings rate is limiting domestic demand and the consumer driven growth that is needed to replace the slowing demand for the country’s exports and maintain the high levels of growth of recent years.
The economic crisis in the United States also presents a unique opportunity to transform domestic policy in areas such as health care, education, financial regulation, and levels of saving and investment. For an excellent overview of opportunities for fundamental reforms in our country, see David Leonhardt’s essay in the New York Times Magazine.
Finally, the country that invented tea now has more than 350 Starbucks stores and is growing a new coffee for the chain, the first Chinese coffee to be sold by Starbucks. Green tea frappuccinos, by the way, are one of the more popular Starbucks drinks in China. Otherwise, the stores and their menus seem to be the same as those in the States.
The People’s Bank of China “manages” the value of the yuan on the foreign exchange market by forcing domestic banks and companies to “surrender” much of the foreign currency that they take in through exports. They are given yuan in return and the People’s Bank of China accumulates about $1 billion a day through this process. The result is that there’s a larger supply of yuan, thus an artificially lower value compared to foreign currencies. Normally a high demand for exports causes the value of a country’s currency to go up as foreigners buy the currency to buy goods. A lower exchange rate means exports are cheaper, which is the rationale behind the managed exchange rate (though it makes imported goods more expensive). For a more detailed explanation, see James Fallows’s The $1.4 Trillion Dollar Question.
The yuan was pegged at about 8.3 per US dollar until it was allowed to gradually appreciate beginning in the second half of 2005. It now stands at 6.84 yuan to the dollar, after its value depreciated relative to the dollar for the first time briefly last fall, when the Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Fannie Mae troubles caused the dollar to rise and most currencies of developing economies to fall. Economists say that the value of the yuan, if allowed to float freely, would be around 5.5 yuan to the dollar.
(from FT.com)
While there may be disagreement on floating versus managed exchange rates, what effect the undervalued yuan has, and how much China should influence the dollar-yuan exchange, there are a few common points between the two countries. Both governments are implementing huge economic stimulus spending, including funds to expand infrastructure and to alleviate unemployment and falling demand.
And both are pursuing more wide reaching stimulus programs and health care reform. Some are even calling the U.S. bailout “socialism with American characteristics.”
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is in Europe for the World Economic forum and visits with leaders in several countries. The article sites the dour mood during this year’s Lunar New Year holiday. Government estimates show that of the roughly “130 million Chinese migrants who crossed provincial lines for work, 20 percent to 30 percent will find themselves jobless after the holiday.”
Layoffs are up and salary raises and bonuses are vanishing. Recent and soon-to-be college graduates are having a difficult time finding jobs.
This may be exacerbating a recent trend of a growing divide between rural and urban incomes.
“City dwellers earned an average annual income of 15,800 yuan ($2,300) a year in 2008... The average rural income was 4,700 yuan (about $690),” which is a ratio of 3.36 to 1. I’d imagine it’s much lower than that in the United States.
And that is a drastic change in the last several decades. Only 30 years ago, China had one of the most equal income distributions of any country, and now it’s one of the most unequal countries in the world. I happened to read a 2002 speech by Nicholas Lardy, an American economist and an expert on China, and it had some relevant points on the potential crisis posed by high levels of inequality during an economic downturn.
“[since the 1980s] China has grown very rapidly and done all of these other things which are fairly positive, inequality has increased at an unprecedented rate. In fact I do not think one can find a society, perhaps with the exception of wars or natural disasters, which has had such a rapid deterioration in income distribution in a twenty-year period.”
…
One of the reasons inequality has been manageable to date is that even the poorest members of Chinese society have much higher incomes today than they did twenty years ago. Relatively speaking they have fallen further behind. But in absolute terms they have done, with very few exceptions, extremely well. Their absolute living standard has gone up enormously… But if economic growth were to slow down, that whole equation would change dramatically. Then you might have a situation in which as inequality gets worse, the people at the bottom of the income distribution might be experiencing an actual decline in their real living standards, rather than an increase. And I think that would be much, much more difficult for the regime to manage. So I think maintaining a robust economic growth and delivering rising living standards is a precondition for maintaining political stability.”
How the economic crisis affects political stability in China and what domestic policy changes come out of it will all be interesting developments to watch. The government has already promised to provide nearly universal health care coverage within three years, not to mention large investments in transportation and education. The health care program was conceived, in part, to induce more consumer spending. Savings rates are really high, around 40%, because of the lack of pensions and private health care insurance. Another way to look at it – in China, 35% of the economy is consumer spending, compared to 70% in the United States, so the high savings rate is limiting domestic demand and the consumer driven growth that is needed to replace the slowing demand for the country’s exports and maintain the high levels of growth of recent years.
The economic crisis in the United States also presents a unique opportunity to transform domestic policy in areas such as health care, education, financial regulation, and levels of saving and investment. For an excellent overview of opportunities for fundamental reforms in our country, see David Leonhardt’s essay in the New York Times Magazine.
Finally, the country that invented tea now has more than 350 Starbucks stores and is growing a new coffee for the chain, the first Chinese coffee to be sold by Starbucks. Green tea frappuccinos, by the way, are one of the more popular Starbucks drinks in China. Otherwise, the stores and their menus seem to be the same as those in the States.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Lunar New Year
Monday, January 26th was the first day of the Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the ox, and given that the Chinese lunar calendar is a twelve year cycle of twelve animals, anyone who turns 12, 24 (like me), 36, 48... years old this year was born in the year of the ox. I also happen to be a Taurus, so I’m more or less the same animal according to the monthly zodiac calendar and the yearly Chinese lunar calendar.
I was invited out for lunch by a parent I know through school and ate at a nice Sichuan restaurant with two families. Sichuan cuisine is one of my favorites so the food was really good. They bought two bottles of alcohol; the grandfather sipped on one and the other was a bottle of brandy that the two fathers drank, only they were both driving, so they kept refilling my glass and I ended up drinking most of the brandy. It hit me later that afternoon and I had to take a long nap.
I went to a friend’s house for dinner and had a lot more excellent food. Everyone does the same thing on New Year’s Eve – hang out at home with the whole family, cook, eat, watch holiday specials on TV, and set off fireworks. One food that is commonly eaten is fish, because the word for fish – “yu” 鱼 – is the same pronunciation as another word – 余 – that means surplus or extra. Eating fish means you’ll have a surplus of wealth and prosperity in the new year (the most common superstition derived from a homonym is the number four 四, which is pronounced the same as the word “to die” 死, so it’s considered a very unluckly number).
So I ate fish and a lot of other good food, drank, and watched the holiday specials, which I missed last year. We watched some on TV and then retreated to a warm bedroom and watched more online, mostly comedy skits and music performances. We later set of fireworks and then the city erupted at around 11:50 pm as seemingly every house set off fireworks outside. The amateur pyrotechnics continued for nearly an hour and then started up again soon after sunrise the following morning.
I posted some pictures on flickr.
I was invited out for lunch by a parent I know through school and ate at a nice Sichuan restaurant with two families. Sichuan cuisine is one of my favorites so the food was really good. They bought two bottles of alcohol; the grandfather sipped on one and the other was a bottle of brandy that the two fathers drank, only they were both driving, so they kept refilling my glass and I ended up drinking most of the brandy. It hit me later that afternoon and I had to take a long nap.
I went to a friend’s house for dinner and had a lot more excellent food. Everyone does the same thing on New Year’s Eve – hang out at home with the whole family, cook, eat, watch holiday specials on TV, and set off fireworks. One food that is commonly eaten is fish, because the word for fish – “yu” 鱼 – is the same pronunciation as another word – 余 – that means surplus or extra. Eating fish means you’ll have a surplus of wealth and prosperity in the new year (the most common superstition derived from a homonym is the number four 四, which is pronounced the same as the word “to die” 死, so it’s considered a very unluckly number).
So I ate fish and a lot of other good food, drank, and watched the holiday specials, which I missed last year. We watched some on TV and then retreated to a warm bedroom and watched more online, mostly comedy skits and music performances. We later set of fireworks and then the city erupted at around 11:50 pm as seemingly every house set off fireworks outside. The amateur pyrotechnics continued for nearly an hour and then started up again soon after sunrise the following morning.
I posted some pictures on flickr.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Inauguration reactions
An editorial in China’s Xinhua newswire raised fears about a reversal in Chinese-American relations that were strengthened under the Bush White House. The Strategic Economic Dialogues, one of the positive developments mentioned in the editorial, in addition to providing a forum high level discussions twice a year, has facilitated some pretty cool joint projects on green energy and sustainable development called EcoPartnerships.
President Obama ruffled some feathers in his inauguration speech by placing “non-believers” alongside Americans of various faiths, and for drawing a clear line on the lack of freedoms and the corruption that is endemic in many countries around the world. But some of those comments irked the media censors here.
From the BBC News in Beijing.
The first step in tackling controversial issues is simply raising the topic and normalizing it so that it is more widely discussed in public and in the media. Of anyone, hearing those words come out of the President’s mouth is the best way to promote those issues. With time, there will be no prejudices towards different faiths, towards atheism, or towards gay, lesbian, and transgender people, so it’s good to hear those statements in Obama’s first speech as president.
The limits on free speech in China might be harder to crack, but slowly more and more controversial ideas are being openly discussed here as well.
President Obama ruffled some feathers in his inauguration speech by placing “non-believers” alongside Americans of various faiths, and for drawing a clear line on the lack of freedoms and the corruption that is endemic in many countries around the world. But some of those comments irked the media censors here.
In his inauguration address, President Obama said: "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions."
That entire passage was retained for an English-language version of the speech that appeared on the website of state-run Xinhua news agency.
But in the Chinese-language version, the word "communism" was taken out.
…
"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history," the president said.
Once again, Xinhua included the passage in full in its English version, but the sentence was taken out of the Chinese translation.
…
China Central Television, the country's main broadcaster, aired the speech live with a simultaneous Chinese translation.
But when the translator got to the part where President Obama talked about facing down communism, her voice suddenly faded away.
The programme suddenly cut back to the studio, where an off-guard presenter had to quickly ask a guest a question.
Censoring sensitive news reports is nothing new in China, where officials go to great lengths to cut critical material.
From the BBC News in Beijing.
The first step in tackling controversial issues is simply raising the topic and normalizing it so that it is more widely discussed in public and in the media. Of anyone, hearing those words come out of the President’s mouth is the best way to promote those issues. With time, there will be no prejudices towards different faiths, towards atheism, or towards gay, lesbian, and transgender people, so it’s good to hear those statements in Obama’s first speech as president.
The limits on free speech in China might be harder to crack, but slowly more and more controversial ideas are being openly discussed here as well.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
English as a global language
I often overlook the opportunities I’ve been given as a native English speaker. I don’t have any teaching qualifications and don’t plan to make a career as an English teacher, but it has been a good way to live here and support myself. There’s never been another language that has reached the scope and influence of English. Latin was the lingua franca of Europe for centuries, but it never reached a global scale (I guess it has in scientific nomenclature, but it’s not used much in any other context).
At the earliest stages of globalization, languages and cultures and economic systems mixed as people traveled and traded around the world, and what happens with any clash between standards (not unlike VHS versus Beta or BluRay versus HDVD), the most popular one – not always the best one – wins out entirely and becomes the standard. In this case, the Anglo-American culture and economic system was the most powerful, so it became the world standard. There’s never been language teachers travelling the globe as there are today with English teachers, so I should consider myself lucky having been born at the time and place where I was. On a related note, last week I went to a gathering for a Changzhou expat group and the language everyone used to converse was English, even though less than a quarter of the attendees were from English speaking countries. It was mostly Europeans, particularly from France, Germany and Austria, and a few from Turkey. In general, among the foreign companies in Changzhou, if they aren’t Japanese, Taiwanese, or Korean, then they are most likely French or German.
The Chinese script had a similar role in East Asia as Latin did in western Europe. The system of Chinese characters is one part of the written Japanese language and was formerly used in the Vietnamese and Korean languages. Chinese will become more important as a world language (see an excellent article on the spread of Mandarin) but, to make a snap judgment, it’s unlikely to become the global language when English is already so widely in use around the world in business and academia. And Chinese has some disadvantages that limit it’s appeal beyond East Asia, such as the difficult writing system. Another related note: one of the eminent American scholars of the Chinese language, John DeFrancis, died this month. He was a persistent critic of the Chinese writing system and advocated reforms that went far beyond the simplification of a number of common characters in the mid-20th century.
One of the reasons English has been widely adopted and extremely successful as a world language is because it adopts foreign words and phrases so easily (but that does make spelling difficult; I’m often explaining to students “this is a French word, that’s why the vowels are strange” or “this word comes from Greek, that’s why the ‘ph’ is used in place of ‘f’). Chinese has no easy method of importing foreign words; acronyms are left unchanged but foreign words and names are translated into characters that sound similar (or close enough). I like learning the names of foreign people, cities, and companies, because some are hilarious ( “Mi er wo ji” for Milwaukee, “Pu li se tong ne” for Bridgestone, “A nuo Shi wa xin ge” for Arnold Schwarzenegger – the last two sound pretty close if you say them fast). Interestingly, Japanese has a separate alphabet, in addition to using traditional Chinese characters, that is used for transcribing foreign words.
One consequence of the large number of speakers using English as a second language and the flexibility of the English lexicon and grammar is that it is rapidly evolving outside of the countries where it is officially spoken. When there are many more students learning English in China than are people in the United States, it will be altered a great deal by those second language speakers, and we should realize that we now have far less influence over how it evolves.
Finally, here’s a discussion of the few English words that come from Chinese (from the obvious – ginseng – to the unexpected – ketchup).
At the earliest stages of globalization, languages and cultures and economic systems mixed as people traveled and traded around the world, and what happens with any clash between standards (not unlike VHS versus Beta or BluRay versus HDVD), the most popular one – not always the best one – wins out entirely and becomes the standard. In this case, the Anglo-American culture and economic system was the most powerful, so it became the world standard. There’s never been language teachers travelling the globe as there are today with English teachers, so I should consider myself lucky having been born at the time and place where I was. On a related note, last week I went to a gathering for a Changzhou expat group and the language everyone used to converse was English, even though less than a quarter of the attendees were from English speaking countries. It was mostly Europeans, particularly from France, Germany and Austria, and a few from Turkey. In general, among the foreign companies in Changzhou, if they aren’t Japanese, Taiwanese, or Korean, then they are most likely French or German.
The Chinese script had a similar role in East Asia as Latin did in western Europe. The system of Chinese characters is one part of the written Japanese language and was formerly used in the Vietnamese and Korean languages. Chinese will become more important as a world language (see an excellent article on the spread of Mandarin) but, to make a snap judgment, it’s unlikely to become the global language when English is already so widely in use around the world in business and academia. And Chinese has some disadvantages that limit it’s appeal beyond East Asia, such as the difficult writing system. Another related note: one of the eminent American scholars of the Chinese language, John DeFrancis, died this month. He was a persistent critic of the Chinese writing system and advocated reforms that went far beyond the simplification of a number of common characters in the mid-20th century.
One of the reasons English has been widely adopted and extremely successful as a world language is because it adopts foreign words and phrases so easily (but that does make spelling difficult; I’m often explaining to students “this is a French word, that’s why the vowels are strange” or “this word comes from Greek, that’s why the ‘ph’ is used in place of ‘f’). Chinese has no easy method of importing foreign words; acronyms are left unchanged but foreign words and names are translated into characters that sound similar (or close enough). I like learning the names of foreign people, cities, and companies, because some are hilarious ( “Mi er wo ji” for Milwaukee, “Pu li se tong ne” for Bridgestone, “A nuo Shi wa xin ge” for Arnold Schwarzenegger – the last two sound pretty close if you say them fast). Interestingly, Japanese has a separate alphabet, in addition to using traditional Chinese characters, that is used for transcribing foreign words.
One consequence of the large number of speakers using English as a second language and the flexibility of the English lexicon and grammar is that it is rapidly evolving outside of the countries where it is officially spoken. When there are many more students learning English in China than are people in the United States, it will be altered a great deal by those second language speakers, and we should realize that we now have far less influence over how it evolves.
Finally, here’s a discussion of the few English words that come from Chinese (from the obvious – ginseng – to the unexpected – ketchup).
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