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October 29, 2006
Martial Chinese Language Instruction
赵
可
超
非
常
赵
My First-Year Chinese teacher during my second year at U of C, Professor Chao (but "really" it's Zhao4; he's from a Beijing family that escaped to Taiwan, where he grew up and lived for much of his life), recently retired, did not merely offer some words and patters for YOUR study and review. He did not accept mutual comprehensibility as his standard for learning. He DEMANDED excellent Beijing-style Putonghua from ALL students, even the ones who started off with Chinese backgrouds and mistakenly believed that would mean this would therefor be a breeze of a class. To prosper in his class, you had to enter a Chinese cultural realm, and if you pretended you were in America... those kids tended to find him officious and unbearable. My heart holds a special place for that man, and I hope to have the opportunity to catch up with him one of these months.
Which perhaps contributed to my excessive exhuberance 2 months ago when I found out the woman I was in the midst of a blind date with, who had many other attractive characteristics going for her as well, was a fellow "Zhao disciple" (to the extent that she did not object when I used such strong language)! I said too much, and I think she may have heard some kind of bad rumor, and ... there was no second date. Oh well.
太公钓鱼愿者上钩
Tai4 Gong1 diao4 yu2 yuan4zhe shang4 gou1
When Lord Tai fishes, he leaves the hook ABOVE the water, such that only those fish who seek it ...
Posted by matt at October 29, 2006 07:47 PM