Hey, United Kingdom: China's watching you!

Been brushing up on your Mandarin lately, Britain?

Well, even if you haven't it may flatter/shock some of you to learn that there are currently more people in China leaning English than there are residents of England, Wales, and Scotland combined. Even more flattering/shocking, despite the decidedly anti-English bent present in China owing to a longer-than-average national memory surrounding that little issue of Hong Kong and the sacking of the Summer Palace in the 1840s, the demand for English teachers with a British accent is higher than it's ever been. Even in China, American English gets no love, despite our sensible spelling system and colorful colloquialisms! I blame the Queen - was there ever such an adorable national leader?

Anyway, in addition to hogging all of the ESL teachers with British accents, China also has an incredibly hilarious news website that features dual English/Chinese articles. For some reason, the people who write these articles (poorly, in the English case) have a weird fascination with the UK. Yesterday's headlines, for example, included: "Average UK child watches 4.5 Hours of TV," "British Prefer Light Beer," and a really very strange article I couldn't make heads of tails of at all - even in Mandarin - called "Britain's Pendulum Clan." Yeah. No clue on that one.

Of these and other truly amusing stories, I've chosen to focus in particular today on one rather confusingly called "The Dave and Nick Show as British Leaders Show Funny Side." Apparently, PM Cameron and the leader of the LibDems decided to turn their first joint press conference into the 'Dave and Nick Show,' which, as the article described, "was complete with a jovial, even matey atmosphere." Nick and Dave are, after all, very matey fellows.

The article proceeds to describe how the two men "let their hair down, even though there [sic] faces visibly reddened several times." That sounds a lot more interesting than the press conference I watched!

The link to the dual language news website is offered below, should a sudden urge to read the China Daily's take on the lives of the British ever strike you. It makes for some compelling (read: hysterical) reading.


The Chinese are coming, and they're speaking English with a British accent. Be warned.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/language_tips/