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‘i think we should be slaves’

so my students are giving mid-term presentations now. the topic: any story about something they experienced over national day holiday. basically, my students are a boring lot … and they readily admit it. i heard over and over again how they slept, watched tv, played computer games, surfed the internet and ate “some delicious foods.”

a few students stuck out, though. one in particular. her father is a history professor, so she spent part of her time reading chinese history books that were lying around her house. her presentation was about the fact that she couldn’t trust anything in those books, thanks to the chinese government’s habit of rewriting — or just erasing — messy bits of history.

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10.13.2003, 11:33 PM · Observations, Politics, School · Comments (1)

lost in translation

click here if you would like to see the shanghai diaries translated into chinese, korean, japanese, italian, german, french, spanish — hell, even portuguese. someone is trying to sell me this service … but i’m not buying. have a feeling there would be lots of “super karate monkey death car”-type stuff in there.

don’t get that reference? well, you need to watch more newsradio, one of the best television shows — ever.

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10.13.2003, 1:07 AM · Site News, Television