A public school in Maine is actively recruiting students from China. Stearns High School is located in Minninocket, Maine, a remote town some 200 miles north of Boston and an hour’s drive from any shopping malls or movie theaters. Minninocket receives an average of 93 inches (236 cm.) of snow a year. Chinese students will be paying $27,000 per year for tuition, room and board and for American public schools seeking new sources of revenue, Stearns High’s move is unprecedented.
But one great concern Stearns High has is that, according to U.S. State Department rules, international students are only allowed to study at a public high school for a year, yet they can attend private schools and colleges for a full four years. Dr. Kenneth Smith, local schools superintendent, believes this is unfair and is fighting to change the law. Dr. Smith is now traveling to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities on a promotional tour and he feels Chinese teenagers will want to study at Stearns High because,
They want to learn English, and they want a college education,” he said. “If we can get them into a college here, they will have achieved their major goal.
In addition, “We’re a community full of assets,” Dr. Smith said, pointing to Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak, which looms just beyond the town, and the abundant hunting, fishing and snow sport opportunities that the locals love. “There’s the beauty, No. 1, and the fresh air. And the roads are good.”
Locally-born English teacher Terry Givens also lends her support to the plan:
I don’t want to sound flip, but why not? We won’t know until we get the opportunity to know them and give them the opportunity to know us. There’s something to be said for putting ourselves out there to see if we can be the prize that’s claimed.
In Beijing, there are nearly a million dogs kept as pets. This is remarkable, especially in light of the fact that twenty years ago, there was a “no dog” policy and it reflects China’s economic rise in the world.
Under Communism, dogs played the role of either guards or herders, while the unfortunate ones wound up on someone’s dinner plate. Beijing now has dog swimming pools, dog social networks, and even BYOD (Bring Your Own Dog) movie theaters and bars! It is claimed that a woman in Xi’an bought a single dog for four million renminbi (approximately $600,000)!
Because of the increase in dog ownership, intense debates have sprung up about so many canines crowding the city. One person posting on a Beijing blog questioned the current dog craze,
The resources that you conserve from having less people, you give to dogs? This is a very serious problem. Are you saying that people are worth less than dogs?
David Hawkes, who translated into English the lion’s share of Cao Xueqin’s colossal Chinese classic “The Story of The Stone” (also known as “The Dream of the Red Chamber”), passed away last August at the ripe old age of 86. His life was unusual, beginning when as a student at Oxford, he wrote to the president of Peking University (Beida) with hope of becoming a graduate student there in the late 1940s. Getting no reply, he went to Hong Kong and was fortunate in that the only foreign professor at Beida, WIlliam Epson, happened to spy his letter on the president’s desk and take action so that young Hawkes could study at Beida.
Hawkes was encouraged when he and classmates went to hear Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1948, despite the Chairman’s thick Hunanese accent:
As the different columns marched below the Gate, each contingent called out “Chairman Mao, long life!”, to which Mao replied “Comrades (tongzhimen), long life!” The Beida students, Hawkes would recall, claimed that they had been singled out by the Chairman for a special mention – he had called out “Fellow students (tongxuemen), long life!” in recognition of Mao’s past connection with the university – but they had probably just misheard.
Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo 劉 曉 波 has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland of The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the following announcement:
Over the past decades, China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal. The country now has the world’s second largest economy; hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Scope for political participation has also broadened.
China’s new status must entail increased responsibility. China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights. Article 35 of China’s constitution lays down that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration”. In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China’s citizens.
For over two decades, Liu Xiaobo has been a strong spokesman for the application of fundamental human rights also in China. He took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989; he was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China which was published on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 10th of December 2008. The following year, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights for “inciting subversion of state power”. Liu has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China’s own constitution and fundamental human rights.
The campaign to establish universal human rights also in China is being waged by many Chinese, both in China itself and abroad. Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China.
Highly acclaimed Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. The 74 year old writer believes that it is the obligation of novelists to probe the meaning of life:
I don’t think there is a great fiction that is not an essential contradiction of the world as it is. The Inquisition forbade the novel for 300 years in Latin America. I think they understood very well the seditious consequence that fiction can have on the human spirit.
Vargas Llosa, who once ran for President of Peru, joins Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mexican poet Octavio Paz as Nobel-winning Latin American writers. He has penned more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including “Conversation in the Cathedral,” “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,” “The Feast of the Goat,” “The Time of The Hero,” and “The War of the End of the World.”
