In a speech this week to his supporters, a group of labor union members, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (a source of his votes), U.S. President Obama accused his political opponents of talking about him “like a dog”. I’m not all interested in American politicians’ dog-eat-dog scenarios. But, I’m particularly fascinated by his use of the word dog in a disapproving way. He might mean his critics talked to him as if he was a dog, or they talk to him as dogs do. But what he means depends on how they talk to dogs or he feels about talking dogs.
Obama: They talk about me like a dog
Posted on 09 September 2010 by Guohua | 5 Comments
The China market for its foreign investors
Posted on 20 February 2010 by Guohua | 17 Comments
China is not a good market to put your money. This is about what a Shanghai-based foreign business owner, blogging as MyLaowai, said in a post at his China-bashing blog.
I’ve read quite a few China blogs, and his is one of the most personally vicious, so negative about his host country and its people, whining, chastising, satirizing, and complaining all the time. I must say reading his posts is a very depressive experience. (But, his and guests’ posts make very good jokes, though, if you read them that way.) I can hardly associate such darkness and gloom in attitudes with a typical can-do businessman.
My English; seeking a language exchange partner
Posted on 02 April 2009 by Guohua | 14 Comments
It’s really frustrating when I find myself struggling to speak good English, especially when I think about this: I started to learn English as a junior high school student in 1990. It’s 19 years now! Anything can happen in 19 years! But today, I still stammer or talk in a confusing way and nobody can understand me when I speak to native speakers on the phone.
I’ve had enough of this!
I want to speak really good English, like a really good native speaker.
Which one is more difficult to learn, English or Chinese?
Posted on 13 November 2003 by Guohua | 4 Comments
Of course, they are two of the greatest languages in the world. One exerts the most powerful synchronic influence over the face of the Planet. The other, on the contrary, is the strongest diachronic language. It’s been weaving together the history of a single largest country in population and later its much smaller neighbors since its first emperor froze the writing system of the language for the first time when the country proper came into being in A.D. 221.
Why don’t I translate what I wrote?
Posted on 16 July 2003 by Guohua | No Comments
Because I think translation is a stupid thing to do. I would like to reserve the difficult job for someone else to do. Tie him or her to my way of wild thinking in Chinese. Make s/he crazy, curse, and feel themselves to be idiots to be translators. And even worse, make them doubtful about their abilities of using the two languages involved and about the reason for their being.