The mystery of the Passby bar (continued)

I've now posted some pictures of the pailou outside the PassBy Bar in Beijing, a very pleasant courtyard bar, restaurant, internet bar, and lending library. It appears that it really, though, is a front for a child clinical psychology operation. Here's the picture:

The sign on the left says:

"Chinese Academy of Sciences Psychology Research Institute
Counseling psychology research training center"

The sign on the right is partially occluded, so here's a picture just of that side:

It says:

"Beijing Huali (Huali is probably a name, although it could mean something like "Magnificent theory" or be a reference to Chinese psychology)

Psychological health center
Child Psychology research training center"

I asked some friends who are child psychologists at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences if they knew anything about this, and they didn't, although they thought that during the SARS crisis there was an effort to disperse counseling centers into the community.

If I have time, I'll try to go back there and try to figure out what the story is.

Interesting idea -- I wonder if I could get my department in Illinois to open a courtyard bar and restaurant? We face our own difficult financial times, and this might be a solution...

 

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12:21:14 PM  #  

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future

The quote is attributed to Yogi Berra (http://www.famous-quotes-and-quotations.com/yogi-berra-quotes.html). It comes to mind because of two books I've been reading. One is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling (I wouldn't recommend them), but I was struck by this passage in a story featuring an automobile:

"A quarter of an hour at illegal speeds caught us a doctor five miles away. Within the half-hour we had decanted him, much interested in motors, and the door of the sweetmeat shop, and drew up the road to await the verdict."

Ah, for the days when 20 mph was an illegal, break-neck speed.

The other is a book by David Crystal, called English as a global language, published by Cambridge University Press. That I would recommend, and it's interesting how recent is the establishment of English as the global language, the lingua franca so to speak. He argues that even in the 1950s it wasn't necessarily pre-determined that English would take on the role that it has. But it happened to be in the right place at the right time, when global institutions were being developed that were facilitated by a common language.

I've often heard the prediction here (and I'll see if I can find a reference) that at some point there will be more web pages written in Chinese than in English. If that happens, I bet it won't happen in my life time. However rich the Chinese economy becomes, I really don't see Chinese taking on the international role that English has. Not that it couldn't, but I really believe that English is too firmly entrenched to be quickly displaced in this way.

Anyone disagree?

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12:15:18 PM  #