On Demand
China Gets Camera Ready
The Olympic Games are underway in Beijing but only after a lot of primping and pruning. They practiced queuing, curbed public spitting, and shut down factories. They’ve even gone so far as to enlist Dr. David Tool, an American teaching at the Beijing International Studies University, to re-translate Beijing ’s mangled English signage. He joins us to explain. Plus, Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and author of Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia Dr. Victor Cha, explains what real changes we might see in China after the cameras are gone.
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I watched the opening ceremony and all I could think was, what happened to America? Here's China with this amazing spectacle, with a plan to land on the moon in a few years, with education and culture as a top priority, with their response to their earthquake - a country seemingly full of pride and optimism and peaceful intentions around the world.
America has the half-time show at the Superbowl, we've abandoned intelligence and education as things we value, forget about the space program, the response to Katrina was a joke, and we're so bogged down in Iraq we can't even mount a serious diplomatic response to Russia in Georgia. What happened to our country?
America has shut down many factories, by sending the business to China. How can America curb public spitting?
To hell with China and their Olympics.
They get what they deserve!
George,
the reason China can do anything of these things is because of SLAVERY.
People don't get paid to work in CHINA!
I am learning Mandarin, so I can understand the difficulty, but for fun:
http://www.engrish.com
Check out engrish.com for some fun mistranslation signage...
Dr. Cha wants volunteers in China.
Are you kidding??
China used slaves to make the costumes to everything assosciated with the Olympics.
china is subsidizing the american middle class, which is in it's last days.
cheap goods, cheap credit.
Read "What China Thinks" by Mark Leonard.
It completely opened my mind on China. For people who irrationally fear or hate China, it may not change your mind, but it will give you a greater insight into what's actually going on in the country. There's a tremendous diversity of thought inside China on where the country should be headed.
Very short book. Farrar Straus Giroux, I think. It blew my mind.
When Queen Elizabeth visits coal towns in England, workers go before her to spray paint piles of coal white, to spare her majesty the sight off the black stuff. The Chinese are by far not the only phony-balonies.
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