My brain is being turned inside out.
Kevin Rudd, Australia's relatively new Prime Minister, is currently in China. He spoke today at a Beijing university. IN MANDARIN CHINESE. (The page I've linked to includes links to video clips.)Now, I don't know about you, but I grew up in America, and I've been living for the past 12 years in Australia. I am NOT used to hearing national leaders speaking a non-English language; on the few occasions I have heard such a thing, it's been a European language (French, Spanish, something fairly, well, white). It shocks me to the core to hear Mr. Rudd speaking casually and confidently IN MANDARIN CHINESE.
That's not to say it shocks me in a bad way. On the contrary. It inspires me. It also shames me — as an American living abroad, I live with a constant low-grade embarrassment and shame at the moment, but something like this really emphasizes that we've picked George Bush as our leader, and the Australians have (finally) picked someone with the kind of vision, and intellectual and cultural courage, to learn MANDARIN CHINESE.
posted by Laura E. Goodin @ 10:39 PM (permalink)
3 comment(s)
3 Comments:
Every country should play its own role. So Austria should not always follow America. As China increasingly is seen as a growing business power, interest in learning the Chinese language had rocketed; it is become more and more important to learn Chinese.
Check the site http://www.learnchinese.bj.cn/ to learn more about learning Chinese.
Disclaimer to everyone: commenter Danny is unknown to me. I assume he's doing searches for blogs mentioning China, which is how he found this post. (Incidentally, Danny, I do not live in Austria, I live in Australia.) If you click on Danny's name, you will see his profile page. From there you can look at his blog, which presents views on current events in China that do not match my own.
-- Laura
There has got to be something bad about Kevin Rudd!!!!!! There has to be!!!!! He is too good to be true!!!!!!!
Incidentally, the verification code thingy for this comment was xpmxgod! I'm not sure what an xpmx is, but it seems there is a god of it!
M
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