She or He?

Do you know "he" and "she" are different in Chinese writing but not in pronunciation? This is hard for many American to believe. In a conversation in Chinese, you never know if the person being the conversation topic is a man or woman, unless you are told or you ask. What a hassle! How could Chinese people bear with this? you may ask. Well, the reason I could guess is that information may not be regarded as being absolute important or necessary historically in our culture. Or that is the way of our language. No matter we like it or not, we carry it with us everywhere we go, even when we speak different language. In English, "he"or "him" seems our usual random pickup word when we talk about a third person.

So when you have a conversation with a Chinese whose first language is not English, possibly the "guy" he or she is talking about using "he" or "him" may not be a man. You don't want to find that out until the end of the hour long conversation. If you have doubt, don't be shy to ask for a clarification in the beginning.

中国人讲话时“他”“她“不分让美国人很难理解。 如果讲话的人不说你也不问，你很难猜测被讲的人是男还是女。这岂不是很麻烦！对这两个字没有读音的区别也许和中国的文化历史有关，被讲之人的性别也许并没有被认为是绝对不可少的信息。 总之，这就是我们的语言。这种语言习惯根深蒂固，甚至表现在当我们用另一种语言进行对话的时候。大部分人在讲英文时无论谈到的人是男是女，通常会不经思考地用“他”作代词。

这就是为什么在你用英文和一个中国人对话的时候，你听到的“他”不一定是个男的， 尤其当英文不是这个中国人的第一语言的时候。如果你有疑问就应赶紧问清楚，千万不要等到和对方谈了一个小时的“他”，到最后才发现“他”是个女的。

American is opening the door to Chinese tourists 美国向中国敞开旅游观光的大门

For the first time, America is opening its door to Chinese tourists. According to today's news, the deal, signed by US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in Beijing, will allow Chinese travel agencies to market packaged leisure tours to American destinations, and it will permit U.S. destinations to advertise directly to the Chinese public.

With the booming economy, more and more Chinese people travel outside the homeland each year. The number is expected to be tripled to 100 million by the year 2020. According to recent calculation, Chinese travelers spend average of $6000 per visit. No doubt that opening doors for Chinese tourists to US will bring in billions of dollars to American travel industry.

美国终于将向中国敞开旅游观光的大门。据今天的新闻报道，美国商业秘书卡洛斯已在北京签署了一项协议，中国旅行社将在中国推销去美国的团体观光旅游，美国的旅游城市也可以直接在中国做旅游观光广告。

随着中国经济的飞速发展，每年有越来越多的中国人去国外旅游。预计到2020年，去国外旅游的人数会增长几乎三倍，达到约一亿的数字。据最新的计算，在美国的中国旅游者在美国一趟旅游平均消费六千美金。无疑，向中国敞开旅游观光的大门将为美国的旅游业赚取上亿美金。

Painting by Ting Shao Kuang 丁绍光的画

Ting Shao Kuang

Ting Shao Kuang is a prominent contemporary Chinese artist. He was born in China in 1939, attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1957, where he discovered the works of Picasso, Matisse and Modiglian. His painting style is a mixture of traditional Chinese painting techniques and the expressive western art. Ting Shao Kuang lives in America now.



丁绍光是一位杰出的中国当代艺术家。他1939年出生于中国，1957年进入北京中央艺术学院学习。在那里，他接触了毕加索等西方大师的艺术作品。他的绘画风格糅合了传统的中国油画技巧及西方的表现艺术。丁绍光现居住在美国。他的画展遍及世界各地。

Laugh over this! 笑话一则

My 12 year old son kept asking everybody the only "trick" question he knew: "Which is heavier, a pound of metal or a pound of cotton?". Believe me! Many people who had fast mouth always gave incorrect answer, which amused my son a lot and motivated his checking people around.

Here was one checking he made at school:

"Which is heavier, a pound of metal or a pound of cotton?", he started his routine on one of his classmate, a same age teen boy. The boy paused for a moment, then suddenly burst out loud with anger: "Monty! Come on. How could you ask me such a stupid question? This is humiliating! You really think I am an idiot and I can't answer you such a simple question?" "Then, which is heavier?", my son murmured. "Of course! The metal is!!"

我儿子十二岁的时候见人就问：“是一磅金属重还是一磅棉花重？”。信不信由你！不少脑筋慢嘴巴快的人总要答错。
有一天，我儿子在学校问一个和他一般大的男孩同样的问题。这男孩愣了愣，突然很生气地对我儿子大声讲：“你怎么会问这么傻的问题。你太瞧不起人了！你以为我苯得连这么简单的答案都不知道？” “那到底是那个重嘛？”我儿子问得小心翼翼。“当然是金属重啰！！”

Culture Difference in Technical Communications

Recently, I read a very good article by Nancy Hoft, “global Issues, Local Concerns”, published in Technical Communication (second quarter 1999). It's about how technical communicators can broaden their scope of work and deal with culture differences.

Culture is at the very heart of the many differences technical communicators must deal with. Culture is not something you can physically touch and see. But you can't ignore the culture because it is real. "Culture is the way we do things around here, and it is how people think, feel and act". History plays a very important role in understanding culture because culture is slowly and constantly changing over time as the result of interacting, communicating and sharing ideas among people. Dealing with a changing difference is much more challenging, which causes more frustrations in global businesses and in technical communications.

Differentiating where one culture ends and another culture begins is another challenge. According to the author, there are basically three common ways to do it: by national boundaries, by dividing the world into markets, and by language groups.

National boundary seems a common sense to everybody, as we talk about the different cultures in China and America, for example. Do we also notice within some nation's boundaries we can see dozens or more cultures? Like in china, there are 56 different national minorities who speak different dialects or even completely different languages. These different cultures coexist, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not.

Another way to differentiate cultures is by dividing the world into markets. Markets are broader geographic areas than nations. One market could include many different nations. Those nations are geographically clumped together for various economic reasons. Those nations, again, might not share the common language. They might be in a war fighting against each other.

Differentiating culture by language groups can be traced back to the history of computer industry, where most computers and their operating systems have been designed with the assumption that their users would communicate using Latin script only (English, French, German, etc.). Counties like Japan, China and Korea have to develop their own hardware and software. This practice has been kept for decades in computer industry. It is only in the past decade when computers and operating systems have adopted more linguistically sensitive capability, an effort of workaround by "using chopsticks and a fork together".

Start a diligent New Year 开始一个勤快的新年

God is fair! Everybody gets a new year to celebrate!

A new year is exciting. No matter who you are and what you do, this is the time to forget about the past and move to the future. A New Year can never be disappointing! If you are not new enough, or you are not new at all, don't worry, you get another chance coming. Hope is everything!

Be aware! Don't just sit on the living hope with your laziness and excuses. Don't turn your hope to the repeated disappointment or desperation. As an example, here's a Chinese sayings about a lazy student who is always looking for a new season to start new but fails with the old excuses:

The Spring is too good for me to focus on study;
The Summer is too hot and makes me sleepy;
The flies and mosquitoes are too disturbing in the Fall;
And how can I study in such a cold Winter?
Pack my bag and wait for the next year.

上帝很公平！无论你是谁，从事什么职业，你总会有一个热闹的新年去庆祝。不是吗？一想到能忘却过去，有一个从新开始的机会就让人激动。而且新年来了去，去了来，即使新年不够新或不够如意也没关系，因为总有下一个新年。人为希望活嘛！

不过要小心！别让活着的希望成为你的陷阱。不要让你的懒惰和借口将希望变为失望和绝望。中国有一个顺口溜，讲的是一个懒惰的学生如何为自己寻找不读书的理由，听听他是怎么说的：

春来不是读书天，
夏日炎炎正好眠，
秋有蚊虫冬又冷，
收拾书包待明年。