BEIJING, China (AP) -- Zhang Hanzhi, an elegant Chinese diplomat who was Mao Zedong's English tutor and an interpreter during the historic 1972 meeting between the Communist leader and U.S. President Richard Nixon, has died. She was 72.
I love the word elegant and I can just picture her in my mind.
She met Mao in 1950, at a party to celebrate the first anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and again in 1963 at Mao's 70th birthday. He seemed relaxed and happy and asked to be her student when he found out she taught English. "Why not?" he asked, when she said she wouldn't dare.
"The Chairman wanted the lessons to start the following day! I was dumbfounded," Zhang wrote in a 1999 article for Time magazine. "I was to teach the great leader whom over a billion people worshiped as their god?"
She described Mao as an ambitious student who was keen on vocabulary -- especially political terms -- and proper word usage, although he had no interest in grammar and correcting his accented pronunciations.
I was going to use this article in my highest class, but read the last line. My upper students would have had a field day with that one. I can hear them now " But teacher, Mao didn't care about grammar and pronunciation......Why should we?"
No comments:
Post a Comment