"What have you done at home for my today's class?" -

- asked I of my students the other day. Amid the soft tension of the blank stares a girl in the front row uttered:
"I was eating healthy food and sleeping well".
How more conscientious a student can a teacher wish for?

Meeting with those who made history

Just last month in my presentation to the staff of our School of Translation and Interpreting at Sun Yatsen University I quoted Danica Seleskovitch (to the raised brows of the teachers present), and today out of the blue our school is honored by a visit from her colleague, Marianne Lederer.
Marianne worked at Paris École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs which is one of the best schools of interpreting, she was a conference interpreter and as I gathered is retired now. She wrote such books as Translation: the Interpretive Model and A Systematic Approach to Teaching Interpretation (the latter in cooperation with Danica Seleskovitch). She didn't bring any of those to sell, and I haven't even gotten a free-bee of the few ones she had on her...Marianne had participated in the Beijing conference on Interpreting and Translation (our Chair-lady went there of course, and I didn't:) and paid a visit south to give a lecture to the future interpreters of Canton.
She immediately recognized the Moscow State Linguistic University dubbing it in her warbly French accent the Maurice Thorez school, which swooshed my memory back to the bitter-sweet years of swimming in the sea of linguistics in general and interpreting in particular. And overall, it was a nice meeting, Marianne held herself with that old-school dignity and the years of simultaneous interpreting were hardly traceable in her...

Where can I get more?

A billboard on our campus. I am wondering where that place to join them is.

Meet the parents

"Владимир Путин празднует в субботу 54-й день рождения. <...>
В Москве, тем временем, в субботу отрывается выставка «Дети рисуют Путина». <...> В программе выставки: знакомство с родителями Кони, любимой собаки Путина, — лабрадорами Хенриетой Бош и Алькором Рос Брэдфордом, дегустация любимых блюд и напитков Путина. Похожие акции проходят и в других городах страны."

"Vladimir Putin is celebrating his 54th birthday. <...> Moscow in the meantime will see the launch of an art exhibition "Children draw Putin". <...> The exhibition will also house such events as acquiantance with the parents of Koni - Putin's pet dog, - Labradors Henrietta Bosch and Alcome Ros Bradford, gustation of Putin's favourite dishes and drinks. Similar events will take place in other cities throughout the country".

It's quite interesting which other animals the curious population will make acquiantance with in other cities.
"How did you feel when you were bearing the President's pet-to-be?" - [amalgamating pride and awe]: "Woof, grrr, wooff".
"And this pigeon once flew over Mr.P's head". - "Nice to make your acquaintance" - "Ooorhh".

..." And today for the show-and-tell - little Nicky with 'I touched Putin's dog's parents'. You can touch little Nicky after the class".

Taking the opportunity I'd like to include the information that in its time shook my understanding of the world - my friends in Russia did not even hear about this yet another child-loving act of Mr.P. You can see the curious PR-act here

Jackie IS the man!

The balls he got:)
Big Brother (his moniker in HK) is burning the night from both ends to loosely use the saying.
In July, a drunken master Chan climbed onstage during a Hong Kong concert by Taiwanese singer Jonathan Lee and demanded a duet... I am just curious what he felt later on... Doing such things requires a certain change of mind,.. FUN TIME!



Later on:

CHAN URGES FOREIGNERS TO MARRY CHINESE WOMEN

A chaser for the previous post - I guess it will be interesting

Martial artist and actor Jackie Chan is urging western men to marry Shanghai women, to help spread Chinese culture and language around the world.

The RUSH HOUR star is disgusted by the global ignorance surrounding Asian issues, but hopes his campaign to lobby foreigners to wed Chinese women will improve the situation.

He says, "We can encourage more foreigners to marry Shanghai ladies so their children will be able to speak Chinese.

"It will help spread Chinese culture far and wide,"

Chan is also fighting for Chinese-style sesame seed cake shops and teahouses to open next to McDonald's fast food restaurants and Starbucks coffee houses, to educate people about Asian food and drink.

I am not sure if it is wise to marry Shanghai women, they are reportedly very authoritative and demanding, so that the whole drive smells of the wish to push the Shanghainese ladies away onto the foreigners :) On the other hand with the men-women ratio in China not in favor of the former, it may be not a politically supported decision. Chan, for one, being a foreign citizen is also married to a Taiwanese woman.

Fang Shilong is da man

Nothing human is strange to them.
Even princesses fart.
Jacky our Chan revealed another facet of his outstanding life.

"Kung Fu film star Jackie Chan Monday admitted that he acted in a porn movie 31 years ago, responding to a report revealed by Hong Kong media, Information Times reported Tuesday.

"I had to do anything I could to make a living 31 years ago, but I don't think it's a big deal, even Marlon Brando used to be exposed in his movies," Chan said. "The porn movie at that time was more conservative than the current films," he said.

Hong Kong netizens tipped local media that Chan was in the porn movie "All in the Family" (Hua fei man cheng chun ) in 1975, with a porn movie star who was famous at that time.

The Hong Kong made movie, directed by Zhu Mu, was defined as a comedy. A family gathers to be with its dying father. The reunion brings to the surface old rivalries.
Dean Shek, Tien Chun, and Sammo Hung were also co-stars.

This movie features the first and (so far) only sex scene in which 'Jackie Chan' has done on film. This is also the only movie he has ever done in which there wasn't a single fight or stunt sequence."

(Asianfanatics.net and this site)

Why all this tabloidness on my blog? I was and am a fan of old Jackie (52 years old) aka Chan Kong Sang aka Chen Gang Sheng (陳港生) aka Seng Long (成龍) aka Cheng Long (成龙) aka Yuen Lo aka Sing Lung aka Pao Pao, who has recently found out his other name - Fang Shilong (房士龍). Turned out his father (Fang Daolong) was a spy and a customs officer and many other things in the Mainland at the turmoiling times of 1930-40s, his mother (Lee Lee) a gambler and an opium smuggler, called 'the Third Sister' in the underworld of Shanghai. Jackie's father had caught his wife-to-be red-handed but let her go, later marrying her. Here's a human touch. But they both left behind on the mainland 2 kids each, fleeing to Hong Kong after the Communists took power. Here's a human tragedy. "It was so commonplace in China. Life was cheap. It has always been cheap. It's a very common thing to do, abandon your children. In every family, there were abandoned children" - says Mabel Cheung, the director of a recent movie "Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family" ("Longde Shenchu: Shiluode Pin Tu") and many Chinese might agree to this. Here's your West meets East. Here's your wonder and not judge - at least as I see it. Not that these people wanted to gamble or smuggle opium, - but wanted to survive.Jackie as a graduate of Peking Opera school in HK met some underworld characters, gambled and reportedly dealt in drugs, but ain't it another human touch to see a human behind the glamour of the ageing superstar? His dad - experienced in Chinese dark customs - hinted that his son had to stay away from Triads and drugs - a sound advice for the real world. And how about the story that Chan has an illegitimate daughter from a HK starlet with a beautiful name Elaine Ng Yi-Lei. And a legit wife (Lin Feng Jiao) and a son. Here's the trial of stardom and manhood. Here are the private emotions and decisions as private as that. Here's the value of one's own life. It's interesting for the guy to live, you can't take it from him. But it's also pretty difficult. In projection to your own life, makes you think. About him as nothing out of the ordinary, - ordinary sweat and blood of his stunts, ordinary perseverance, ordinary responses to ordinary human feelings, ordinary sins and ordinary punishments for those. And makes you think about yourself and your choices and your decisions.

Anyhow, I like the dude. Flesh and blood and rewards for everything. Those who can hear let them hear. A literally outstanding example.

For those learning Chinese - here's the site with Jackie Chan's songs - lyrics and sound, good for learning with a star-sparkled twist. Or - for me it's a more luring way to study Chinese, maybe because he's a memory of an endless childhood o'mine, in synch with his vivacious acting impressed for-almost-ever on celluloid two decades ago. He is pretty prolific, old chap. I counted 28 music albums.

A Shoe from ... Capt'n Sparrow!

Amazing treats the Hainan shore revealed - we had a glance at it in passing but I bet it makes you imagine how this concoction from time to time slowly crawls across the beach minding its own marine business...