Ben's China Adventure

A NEW ROMANCE LANGUAGE & BUSINESS

First off, before I have people correct me, I know "Romance" Languages are descendant from Latin and their name doesn't mean they are romantic. That having been said, when people think of romantic languages, many times French or Italian comes to mind. For a language that is according to Chinese people, "very eloquent" and "the most romantic language in the world," I fail to see what they're talking about. Yes, there are 100 words for the color blue, but hear/listen/sound (ting) and look/watch/read (kan) are all the same words in Chinese. I think the Chinese are lacking in descriptive abilities too. Panda is xiong mao (bear cat,) bear is gou xiong (dog bear,) and yak is mao niu (hairy cow.) Also with the proper Beijing accent most of the words are supposed to end with the sound ARRR. Wan (fun) becomes warrr. Chi (eat) becomes churr. Chinese is almost as romantic as Welsh.

We talked about Chinese business with our new history teacher, Lee. Despite his name is not Chinese, but British with a mowhawk and eyebrow piercing. He spent 2 hours convincing us of the pending economic collapse of the country. Apparently, any statistic the government reports is a lie. This has been demonstrated countless times, from the front page of China Daily proclaiming that of the 3800 cases of bird flu only 50 have been in China, to the government reporting wrong numbers of economic growth. The problem is compounded by the banking system here. The average Chinese person saves 40% of their income (for comparison, the average American saves -0.2% - spending more than they earn.) This is great for the banks here, loads of incoming money. The problem comes when the banks lend out more money than they have. 30% of all loans here are bad (i.e. will never be repayed) and the banks cover the costs. Since the government can't have businesses going bankrupt they bail out the banks. There is also a huge culture of corruption here in which it is better to have your company lose money than to make a profit (so it will be bailed out by the government instead of having to pay back its debts.) My understanding of economics in minimal, suffice to say, China is screwed.