06/17/24 - Zhengzhou high schools have an admittance rate of 73%. That’s almost double of other states.
#Severe rainstorm in Meizhou causes 5 casualties and 15 missing persons. On the 17th of June, Guangzhou’s Anti-Flood Anti-Drought Command Centre posted an announcement about the rainstorm going on in Meizhou. Some areas, like Pingyuan County, has received more than 369.3mm of rainfall in 24 hours. Many towns in Pingyuan County experienced rockslides, causing 5 deaths, 15 missing persons, and 13 trapped persons.
#Is AI going to make language majors obsolete? “Whether AI makes language majors obsolete or not, something is very clear, and that is: there’s no need to major in English at all, but you do need to learn how to speak English.
The point of speaking English isn’t to say hello to people or order tickets or welcome guests. You’ll never need these skills in most circumstances. The only important point to speaking English is just 1. to describe your experiences and 2. to communicate your opinions.
And these two are two different stages. Describing your experience is fairly easy, you just gotta remember to use past tense. Expressing your opinions is much harder.
Why are these two the most important? The reason is simple.
99% of all language is just these two parts.
When you’re with clients from the Middle East or Africa or Latin America, what are you gonna talk about? When you’re taking out some European or American upper manager, what are you gonna talk about? When you’re at a company meeting with both Chinese people and foreigners, what are you gonna talk about?
Pay attention to your own Chinese, you’ll fine that 99% of the time or more, you’re just giong to be sharing your experience, describing the progress of the project, and expressing your opinions.
And the best way to practice these skills is to switch perspectives when telling stories.
Memorisation is pointless. You’ll never learn how anything practical that way. But switching perspectives definitely works.
For example, the first lesson is, “Last week, I went to the theatre. I had a very good seat. The show was wonderful. There was a young man and a young woman sitting behind me.”
You can memorise all of that and probably never use it. But you can try to tell the same story from a different point of view.
You can pretend to be the protagonist’s neighbour: “Last week, my neighbour told me he went to the theatre. He had a very good seat.”
Or you can pretend you’re the young man or young woman in the story: “Last week, my girlfriend/boyfriend and I went to the theatre. The show was very good but we didn’t care.”
Use different perspectives to describe different sides to the same story from the first person point of view is great at improving your oral skills.
You can go through 99 different stories at one per day and only use 3 months. It only takes about an hour each day, and you can automatically get to a point where you can chat about anything.
The even harder option of telling a funny story exists too. You can look at New Concepts English book 3, and you can learn how to tell funny stories in English, and still practice the same way.
Of course, while you’re practicing, you should record yourself and listen to it afterwards to note any mistakes.
Having a partner who’s at the same skill-level as you is even better. He can record for you and note down any grammar mistakes, and you can do the same for him.
This method is especially great for people who got more than 100 in Gaokao English.
If you think your basic pronunciation sucks too bad, you can spend a month learning phonetics instead.”
Comments say, “But why didn’t you care that the show as good?”
“My understanding is the exact opposite. In the AI Age, English might become the ultimate human language, because almost all of human knowledge is written in English. Even if you knew that before, it’s useless to you, because you can’t find all of it. But now, the AI can track down anything you want, it’s infinite efficiency. You’ll get even more out of it if you know English.”
“Second Language + any skill is a great advantage. Like second language + marketing. Second language + operations. If all you have is the lnaguage, it’s too hard to find a job. You gotta pair it with a different skill.”
#Multiple top universities extend olive branch to Jiang Ping. And yet all of them say she is “welcome to apply”, instead of that she’s been “admitted as an exception.” In response to this, Zhejiang University’s Exam Research centre has explained to Peng Pai News that Gaokao is a large-scale exam that affects all of society, with extremely high stakes. It has formed a highly standardised and highly fair system. And if is difficult to balance between “large-scale fairness” and considerations of individual uniqueness. “In this scenario, making a special admittance requires us to look at the quality of various exams, their scale, their fame, etc, in order to ensure fairness. Because you can’t equate competitions with Gaokao, or else you might cause other issues to get mixed up and affect fairness.”
Comments say, “Would you rather trust the Gaokao or a 48-hour open online test?”
“She should apply to an overseas university. It’ll bring more opportunities than going to a Chinese one.”
“Because it’s all untrustworthy. If you don’t believe me, make her compete in a different competition from her professor. Or make her professor and his wife take different competitions.”
“First time in my life I’ve realised how much climate impacts hair styles. The left pic is after a day in Chongqing, and my hairstyle has completely collapsed and my hair is curling outwards with no shape at all.
The right pic is after a day in Chengdu, and I still look the same as when I first stepped out of my door.
In both cases, I just straightened my hair in the morning and didn’t use any products at all. Even though Chengdu is also kinda humid, Chongqing is really like a giant steamer.”
Comments say, “After 10 minutes in Guangdong, you’ll look like you just crawled out of the birth canal.”
“Chongqing: I’ll pour down rain in the morning and then bake the world on full blast with sunlight at noon, working myself to the bone to maintain 80% humidity! Also, making lots of pools of water that I heat up so that mosquitoes can reproduce as much as they want!”
“Fuck me, I gotta go to the north at least once in my life then, see if my oily skin and hair can still be saved.”
In Taizhou, Mr. Sun and Mrs. Zheng had a pair of twin boys after marriage. After the boys were born, Mr. Sun began living and working overseas long-term and has never taken care of the kids or contributed any of his money towards the household. Mrs. Zheng took the case to court, requesting that Mr. Sun fulfil his parental obligations. The judge learned that Mr. Sun has sued for divorce twice, and the judge believed that there’s still the possibility that they could repair their relationship and thus denied the divorce both times. Thus, Mr. Sun began refusing to contribute to the household in protest. After the judge explained the law to him, Mr. Sun said that he’ll definitely fulfil his duties from now on.
Comments say, “There’s a possibility? Divorce is so hard.”
“I don’t understand why we trap people like this.”
“They’re saying themselves there’s no love between them. Why do these bastards still think they do?”
#Tobacco Bureau responds to accusations of faking evidence. Gansu, Tianshui’s Ruan Shuangquan was accused of selling cigarettes without a license and sentenced to 5 years. In his appeal, his lawyer produced evidence that the key evidence used to convict him was fabricated after the fact by two Tobacco Bureau Employees. The Maiji District Tobacco Bureau responds that the two workers suspected of forging evidence has been transferred to Internal Affairs.
Comments say, “Is this not a crime??”
“Who ordered these two to do it?”
“The Tobacco Bureau seems to be a products of the planned economy age. Can’t we change them to the Anti-Smoking Bureau now?”
A video of a village official in Guangdong, Meizhou, running through the streets yelling at everyone to get up and run after receiving a warning that they’re going to open the flood gates:
Comments say, “What does open the flood gates mean? The water is rising above the river banks?”
“Opening the flood gates again…”
“I don’t really care what’s going on, but are you supposed to do this in the middle of the night? And the village major is the only person they told about this? We only care about people upstream, and people downstream can go die?”
#Police dog gets stolen in Yunnan. According to Xiaoxiang Morning News, on the 17th, a “dog-seeking notice” went viral on the internet. The contents show that they are seeking the police dog Lamen, who went missing on the 15th. According to Shenzhen TV, the original poster explains that Lamen is a retired police dog being kept as an outside pet. He is a German Shepherd and is usually very mild-mannered. When he went to pee, he was mistaken as a stray by someone and taken away on a scooter. They’ve been looking for two days now and is hoping for any kind of clues.
A lot of netizens have flooded the Ruili Police Station with comments like, “I hear your dog got stolen.” “Quick, get in touch with your coworkers—your coworker got stolen!”
On the 17th, Xiaoxiang News attempted to contact Ruili Police Station multiple times to confirm the details of this case, but was turned down. But a worker at the Mengmao Border Control office told reporters that a police dog really got stolen from the SWAT Team. “I don’t know anything else at the moment.”
Comments say, “So…does this count as attacking a police officer?”
“What the fuck. He probably got eaten.”
“ “All the dogs I eat are from a ranch.” >: (“
“Look for him quickly! I’m worried it’s drug dealers getting revenge!”
“I’ve seen some discussion on weibo about the Beijing Gaokao versus the Henan Gaokao.
I can tell you an example that might raise some thought.
The world’s largest hospital is not in America, nor in Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou. It’s in Henan, Zhengzhou.
They have over 7000 beds in the hospital before, and in emergencies, it can go up to 10,000. [It’s not unusual to see extra beds in corridors, but have you seen extra beds in break rooms?) Supposedly, between all their buildings, they h ave 12,500 beds now.
They perform 1000 surgeries every day.
The development of the Zhengzhou University affiliated hospital is unprecedented, and probably won’t be seen again in the future. The problem is mostly that Henan just has too many people. Before the Zhengzhou University affiliated hospital got started, Henan can’t keep most of its patients. Any patient who could afford it went to Beijing to get treatment, because there weren’t any good hospitals in Henan.
Zhengzhou University hospital changed this trend. Not only is it big, but it’s getting more skilled every day, and most patients are staying in-state now. They don’t have to travel far out of state to get treatment.
Going back to Gaokao, education and healthcare are both rare resources. Henan’s Gaokao is notoriously hard because it has too much population, and there are too few good schools in-state. I’ve got a roommate in uni who was from Henan who’s working in Zhengzhou now. It wasn’t easy for him to break his way through a veritable army back in the day.”
Comments say, “The problem with Henan is that there aren’t enough schools there. Forget about Beijing or Tianjin. After 20 years of oppression by the Board of Education, Beijing’s university admittance rates aren’t great either. There are a lot of average universities in Beijing with affiliated high schools that solve most people’s need for higher education. Another example of Shenzhen. Shenzhen’s built a ton of great schools in the last 10 years. Why not learn from them?”
“Aside from the population problem, Henan also has the problem that not enough people are eliminated with the high school entrance exam. For example, Zhengzhou high schools have an admittance rate of 73%. That’s almost double of other states. And Henan allows you to take the high school entrance exam again. Most other states don’t let you have a second chance. I think 1/3rd of Henan students this year are repeat students. This is a vicious cycle.”
“Shandong’s got the same population as Henan, but we don’t have any hospitals nearly that big. Why? Is it because Shandong local hospitals are better than Henan’s?”