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Written by Anastasia Maximchuk.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
Somewhere in the cracks of her A.I. major, Marie takes classes in English. Yesterday, she gave a five minute presentation in English on … William Wordworth’s The Daffodils (‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ – that one). She was taken with it, in her own words,
because it suggests a certain sweet peacefulness and because the image that it offers us shows a breath-taking natural beauty.
It also reminded her of a pastoral poem by Wang Wei (this is a slide from her presentation:)
And the other poem it reminded her of? The song ‘Colors of Wind’ from Disney’s Pocahontas. Listen here. Roll over, Romantics…
Ben’s business is growing: he just hired his second assistant (his first, if you remember, was his little sister). She is a young Beijinger who was selling a few clothes online herself – on a much smaller scale than Ben (business-wise, I don’t mean she was selling tiny lederhosen for dwarves or something).
Ben noticed this and thought she might fit the bill. Her ‘interview’ was done in subterfuge: he pretended to be interested in buying an item, to feel out how her skills at dealing with customers. Satisfied, he broke cover and offered her a percentage of his sales which will amount to something between 1000RMB and 3000RMB (£100-300) a month. She’ll be starting in a week or so. Next … the world?
And, as promised, a photo below of a typical sweater Ben sells (with my cat as an entirely accidental model):
A typical sweater bought wholesale by Ben (in this case from a factory in Guangzhou) and sold on
Alec Ash
I studied Mandarin in Beijing, where I began writing this blog in the Olympic summer of 2008