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A great Chinese man
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Sep 29, 2009 7:52 am
407 Views
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Chinese 103-Year-Old Wall Street Emigrant Sees End of Communism
Sept. 29 -- Zhou Youguang was a child of 6 when a revolution toppled China’s last emperor in 1912. He was 43 when he says he left a Wall Street banker’s job to help Mao Zedong’s Communists create what he thought would be a democracy after decades of warlord rule, occupation and civil war.
Now 103, he has seen China transformed from a country of 368 million being carved up by foreign powers to a nation of 1.3 billion and the world’s fastest-growing major economy, expanding at an average annual rate of 9.9 percent from 1978 to 2008. He says he still believes China will eventually become a democracy -- in spite of communism, not because of it.
“China will follow the mainstream of the world, sooner or later,” the pajama-clad Zhou said during an interview in the book-lined study of his third-floor walk-up apartment in central Beijing.
His experiences encapsulate the complicated legacy of the Communist Party, which celebrates 60 years in power this week with a military parade past Tiananmen -- the Gate of Heavenly Peace -- where Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic on Oct. 1, 1949.
While Zhou endured three years of forced separation from his family during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, he survived a purge of intellectuals that led many of his colleagues to commit suicide. He was also given the opportunity to devise a new system of spelling out Chinese characters with the Roman alphabet that helped hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants learn to read.
‘Lucky Ones’
“There were very few who returned from America who escaped the catastrophe,” Zhou said. “I was one of the very lucky ones.”
Like China’s leaders, Zhou divides Communist rule into two periods: the first three decades dominated by Mao, who died in 1976, and the second characterized by the opening of China to the world by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997. While Deng’s era sparked rapid growth, Zhou, an economist by training, considers it a mixed success.
Deng “reformed the economy but didn’t reform politics,” Zhou said. “In the political scene, there was absolutely no change; it was an autocracy.”
That wasn’t the outcome Zhou Enlai promised Zhou in the late 1930s. The two, who aren’t related, met in Chongqing when the Yangzi River city became the wartime capital following Japan’s occupation of Nanjing in 1937.
Meetings of Intellectuals
Zhou Enlai -- who would become China’s premier in 1949 -- held monthly get-togethers with intellectuals, including Zhou, who worked for Sin Hua Trust & Savings Bank, which was founded in 1914 and became part of the Bank of China Ltd. in 2001.
“Zhou Enlai told me at those meetings that the Communist Party was a democratic party,” Zhou said.
Zhou left China for New York at the end of 1946, where he represented Sin Hua at Irving Trust Co., the bank’s U.S. agent, at its Art Deco headquarters on 1 Wall Street. He and his wife, Zhang Yunhe, returned to Shanghai in June 1949, as the Communists neared victory.
“We thought that with China liberated, there was hope; everyone wanted to come back home and do something,” Zhou wrote in a 2008 autobiography.
When he arrived, Shanghai -- occupied by the People’s Liberation Army the previous month -- straddled the communist- capitalist divide. Zhou lived in both worlds: working at Sin Hua and at what is now the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics as a professor. There he and his colleagues, most of them scholars who returned from the U.S., watched as textbooks were jettisoned for new ones reflecting Marxist theories of class struggle.
Common Language
In 1955, Zhou, whose hobby was linguistics, was asked during a Beijing conference to lead a group creating a standardized system of writing Chinese phonetically with Roman letters. The project would supersede a hodgepodge of Romanization systems and was part of a drive that included simplifying the way thousands of characters were written and teaching a common language, Mandarin, in schools throughout the country.
“I said no way, I’m an amateur,” Zhou said. It was too late; the premier, who remembered his avocation from their days in Chongqing, had already called Zhou’s colleagues in Shanghai and told them he wouldn’t be coming home.
Zhou’s pinyin system, which turned “Peking” into “Beijing,” uses markers to identify which of Mandarin’s four tones to use. It became the national standard in 1958 and has helped reduce China’s illiteracy rate to 10 percent today from about 80 percent in the 1950s.
Mao’s Purge
His new career also kept him relatively safe when economics professors, especially those who had lived in the U.S., became targets of Mao’s Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957 to purge anyone he thought opposed his revolution.
“Every day there were people killing themselves,” Zhou wrote in his autobiography.
Zhou didn’t completely escape persecution. He was branded a “reactionary academic authority” in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution and sent to northwestern China’s Ningxia region, where, already well into his 60s, he spent a year toiling in rice paddies. He was allowed to return to his family in 1972. Since then he’s helped make pinyin a global standard and published books on linguistics.
Zhou never expressed regret in the interview for giving up his New York lifestyle. In 1949, the “common people trusted the Communist Party,” he said. Looking back over 60 years, he now believes the party, which he never joined, “cheated the Chinese people. They destroyed everything, especially the intellectuals.”
That doesn’t stop Zhou from saying that China’s economic boom will someday be accompanied by the democracy he had hoped to help create.
“I’m always optimistic,” he said.
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Napoleon Hill Success Quotes
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Aug 18, 2009 8:25 am
665 Views
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Napoleon Hill Quotes
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
Success comes to those who become success conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure conscious.
The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.
Most of us go through life as failures, because we are waiting for the "time to be right" to start doing something worthwhile. Do not wait. The time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
If you're not learning while you're earning, you're cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.
There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
Find out what you really love to do, and then find a way to make a good living doing it.
The subconscious mind makes no distinction between constructive and destructive thought impulses. It works with the material we feed it, through our thought impulses. The subconscious mind will translate into reality a thought driven by fear, just as readily as it will translate into reality a thought driven by courage or faith.
All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
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Think you know everything?
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Aug 18, 2009 6:23 am
650 Views
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Think you know everything?
1. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
2. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
4. The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
5. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
6. There are more chickens than people in the world.
7. Two thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
8. The longest one syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
9. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
10. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.
11. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
12. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt."
13. All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back on the $5 bill.
14. Almonds are a member of the peach family.
15. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
16. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
17. There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
18. Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula"
19. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
20. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
21. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
22. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
23. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer
24. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."
25. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
27. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
28. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
29. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
30. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
31. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
32. Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister.
33. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
34. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
35. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand ..now you know everything.
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Blonde's Flat Tire
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Aug 4, 2009 6:41 pm
821 Views
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Yesterday I had a flat tire on the interstate. So I eased my car over to the shoulder of the road, carefully got out of the car and opened the trunk.
I took out 2 cardboard men, unfolded them and stood them at the rear of my car facing oncoming traffic. They were in trench coats exposing their nude bodies to the approaching drivers and looked very life like.
Cars started slowing down as drivers were looking at my lifelike men which made it safer for me to work at the side of the road. And of course, traffic started backing up. Everybody was tooting their horns and
waving like crazy. It wasn't long before a state trooper pulled up behind me.
He got out of his car and started walking toward me. I could tell he was not a happy camper!
'What's going on here? '
'My car has a flat tire', I said calmly.
'Well, what are those obscene cardboard men doing here by the road? '
I couldn't believe that he didn't know. So I told him, 'Helloooooo,
those are my emergency flashers! '
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Elephant
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Aug 4, 2009 2:22 pm
799 Views
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It's A Frickin Elephant
We, who have taught, or love children who have been taught, know this is funny!
From the diary of a Pre-School Teacher
My five-year old students are learning to read.
Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,
"Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!"
I took a deep breath, then asked..."What did you call it?"
"It's a frickin' elephant! It says so on the picture!"
And so it does...
" A f r i c a n Elephant "
Hooked on phonics! Ain't it wonderful?
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Try this !
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Aug 3, 2009 7:22 am
850 Views
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This is the craziest thing I've seen in a long time.
For those of you in the 21st century (e.g. blackberry
owners), you'll need to look at this on a pc. You also
have to get out of your seat and walk away from
your computer. People may think you're crazy.
But it's well worth it.
When you look at this picture in a
closer look you see its Albert Einstein.
But if you stand 10 to 15 feet away from your screen,
It will become Marilyn Monroe.
Give it a try
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More T-shirt slogans
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Aug 1, 2009 10:42 am
807 Views
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Doesn't Play Well With Others"
"Choose Your Sick Days Carefully"
"Summer in Nags Head, Some Are Not"
ABOARD A 3-YEAR-OLD: "My Mom Calls Me No! No! But My Grandma Calls Me Sweetie" –
ABOARD A VERY LARGE MAN: "Congratulate Me, I Used to Be Anorexic"
"I Get Enough Exercise Just Pushing My Luck"
"Ran Into My Ex – Put It in Reverse and Hit Him Again!"
"Statistics Means Never Having to Say You're Certain"
"Got Rid of the Kids, the Cat Was Allergic"
"I Am Not a Pack Rat – I Am a Collector"
"I'm So Great I'm Jealous of Myself"
"I've Been on So Many Blind Dates That I Should Get a Free Dog"
"Due to Budget Cuts, the Light at the End of the Tunnel Has Been Cut Off"
"I Wish the Buck Stopped Here – I Could Use a Few"
"Where There's a Will, I Want to Be in It"
"Yes, Dear"
"This Is Not the Life I Ordered"
"Beer Is Proof That God Loves Us and Wants Us to Be Happy"
"I Am the Only Hell That My Mother Ever Raised"
"My Wild Oats Have Turned to Oat Bran"
"Out of My Mind – Will Be Back Shortly"
"How Long a Minute Is Depends on Which Side of the Bathroom Door You're On"
"Waiting For Mr. Right" – the shirt gets a lot funnier when you realize that the figure on the front of it is a skeleton.
"Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart"
"I'm Not Cynical – Just Experienced"
"Today Was a Total Waste of Makeup"
"Do You Want to Talk to the Man in Charge, or to the Woman Who Knows What's Going On?"
"I Didn't Climb to the Top of the Food Chain to Be a Vegetarian"
"You Have the Right to Remain Silent, So Please Shut Up!"
"I'd Kill for a Nobel Peace Prize"
"What's the Difference Between In-Laws and Outlaws? Outlaws Are Wanted"
"I Have the Body of a God. Unfortunately the God Is Buddha"
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Slogans on T-shirts
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Aug 1, 2009 10:15 am
798 Views
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Real slogans found on T-shirts:
> >
> >1. Frankly, Scallop, I Don't Give a Clam. (seen on Cape Cod)
> >
> >2. That's It! I'm Calling Grandma! (seen on an 8 year old)
> >
> >3. Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up.
> >
> >4. Procrastinate Now.
> >
> >5. Rehab Is for Quitters.
> >
> >6. My Dog Can Lick Anyone.
> >
> >7. I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts - Do You Want Fries With That?
> >
> >8. Party - My Crib - Two A.M. (on an infant t-shirt)
> >
> >9. Finally 21, and Legally Able to Do Everything I've Been Doing Since 15.
> >
> >10. ALL MEN ARE IDIOTS, AND I MARRIED THEIR KING.
> >
> >11. West Virginia: One Million People, and 15 last names.
> >
> >12. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. It comes bundled with the software.
> >
> >13. I'M OUT OF ESTROGEN AND I'VE GOT A GUN.
> >
> >14. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
> >
> >15. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
> >
> >16. STUPIDITY IS NOT A HANDICAP. Park elsewhere!
> >
> >17. POOR SPELLERS OF THE WORLD- UNTIE!
> >
> >18. MOOSEHEAD: A great beer and a new experience for a moose.
> >
> >19. They call it PMS because MadCow Disease was already taken.
> >
> >20. He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless dead.
> >
> >21. Time's fun when you're having flies.......Kermit the Frog.
> >
> >22. POLICE STATION TOILET STOLEN .... Cops have nothing to go on.
> >
> >23. FOR SALE: Iraqi rifle. Never fired. Dropped once.
> >
> >24. Heck is where people go who don't believe in Gosh.
> >
> >25. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up a thousand times
> >the memory.
> >
> >26. The Meek shall inherit the earth....after we're through with it.
> >
> >27. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
> >
> >28. Ham & Eggs - A day's work for a chicken; A lifetime commitment for a
> >pig.
> >
> >29. WELCOME TO KENTUCKY - Set your watch back 20 years.
> >
> >30. The trouble with life is there's no background music.
> >
> >31. If there is no God, who pops up the next kleenex?
> >
> >32. Suicidal Twin Kills Sister By Mistake
> >
> >33. The original point-and-click interface was a Smith & Wesson.
> >
> >34. MY WILD OATS HAVE TURNED TO SHREDDED WHEAT.
> >
> >35. Computer programmers don't byte, they nybble a bit.
> >
> >36. Computer programmers know how to use their hardware.
> >
> >37. MOP AND GLOW - Floor wax used by Three-Mile-Island cleanup team.
> >
> >38. NyQuil -The stuffy, sneezy, why-the-hell-is-the-room-spinning
> medicine.
> >
> >39. Quoting one is plagiarism. Quoting many is research.
> >
> >40. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he
> was God, and I didn't.
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Puns
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Jul 30, 2009 6:37 pm
844 Views
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Puns:
1. Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons.
The stewardess looks at them and says "I'm sorry, gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger."
2. Did you hear that NASA recently put a bunch of Holsteins into low
earth orbit? They called it the herd shot 'round the world.
3. Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood
and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to
much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.
4. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a
firein the craft, it sank proving once
again that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.
5. A three legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides
up to the bar and announces: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."
6. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root
canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
7. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were
standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager
came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off.
"Because,"he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open
foyer."
8. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them
goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Amal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him
"Juan." Years later, Juan sends
a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the
picture, she tells her husband that she wishes
she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband responds, "They're
twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal."
9. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened
up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival
florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down,
but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival
florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to
close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed heir store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop.
Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that: Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.
10. And finally, there was a man who sent ten different puns to friends, in the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.
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Doctors' Ties
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Jul 25, 2009 5:27 pm
805 Views
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Study: Doctors' ties provide nesting ground for germs
JERUSALEM (AP) — Your doctor's necktie may be hazardous to your health.
That's the conclusion of a study by an American medical student who found that while neckties may look nice, they also provide a convenient nesting ground for germs.
Steven Nurkin, who is completing his medical studies at Israel's Technion University, said he came up with the idea for the study while doing an elective course at New York Hospital Queens.
Nurkin, used to the casual open-collar atmosphere at Israeli hospitals, immediately noticed that his American colleagues wore ties.
"While examining patients, they would lean over, and their neckties would swing onto the bedding or onto the patient. Often it got coughed on or came into contact with a variety of other things," said Nurkin, 27, a native of Brooklyn.
Although the doctors would wash their hands after treating patients, they would also fix their ties after drying off, potentially re-exposing them to well-known hospital bugs, Nurkin said. The fact that neckties are rarely washed adds to the potential risk, he said.
Nurkin examined 42 ties of doctors and clinical workers at the New York hospital and found that 20 of them — or 48% — carried at least one infectious microbe.
In comparison, he examined the ties of 10 security guards who don't come into direct contact with patients. Only one of the ties carried a disease-causing microorganism.
"A clinician's necktie provides little benefit to patient care," the study concludes. "This study brings into question whether wearing a necktie is in the best interest of our patients."
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