Monday, May 23, 2005

Star Wars III As usual, in China the latests movies are available on DVD only days after they hit US screens. This also happened to Star Wars IIII. Danwei comments: <<Associated Press reporters are fuming that they can buy a DVD copy of Star Wars 3 in Beijing 3 days after the cinema release. I would be fuming too if I was offered it for RMB 20 (a version of the same story is here). Reuters obviously hires smarter reporters in China who are reporting the usual RMB 7.>> 12:43:24 PM    comment []

Mandarin A survey by the National Language Commission showed that only 53% of the Chinese population speaks Mandarin (source: Shanghai Daily). That surprises me, as I thought that everybody in China who has had some sort of education should have been learning Mandarin in school. I thought the figure would therefore be more in the 70-80% range, taking into account that most people do not use the national language in their daily lives. Luckily the Chinese characters are the same for whatever Chinese dialect people speak, so when people do not understand each other they can still communicate by writing down the characters. 10:41:22 AM    comment []