In honor of my Chinese readers, please enjoy this link to an astonishing article in this week’s New Yorker on English language learning, the Li Yang way:

China today is divided by class, opportunity, and power, but one of its few unifying beliefs—something shared by waiters, politicians, intellectuals, tycoons—is the power of English. […] Li’s cosmology ties the ability to speak English to personal strength, and personal strength to national power. It’s a combination that produces intense, sometimes desperate adoration. A student named Feng Tao told me that on one occasion, realizing that he had enough cash for tuition to an out-of-town Li lecture but not enough for train fare, “I went and sold blood.”

via Language Log and Dick & Garlick