Having conquered the world’s markets, China’s countless millions have now embarked on a new mission - to master the English language, the global language of art and commerce.

The New Yorker has an interesting piece on the Chinese’ obsession with English in the latest issue:

China has been in the grip of “English fever,” as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, for more than a decade. A vast national appetite has elevated English to something more than a language: it is not simply a tool but a defining measure of life’s potential. 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. Every college freshman must meet a minimal level of English comprehension, and it’s the only foreign language tested. English has become an ideology, a force strong enough to remake your résumé, attract a spouse, or catapult you out of a village. Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States. English private schools, study gadgets, and high-priced tutors vie for pieces of that market. The largest English school system, New Oriental, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Having watched the relentless determination of the Chinese Continue Reading…

For the sake of the honor of Tamil Nadu and 77 million Tamils worldwide, we hope that the reports of Ajith’s Billa being screened on May 10 at the Cannes Film Festival turn out to be false.

Featuring the two non-actors Ajith and Nayantara, Ajith’s Billa (the remake of the old Billa starring Rajinikanth) is one of the ugliest Tamil movies we’ve seen in several decades.

As if watching Ajith’s Billa was not bad enough, now comes the horrifying news that this horror show is going to be showcased at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

All these years, we thought the Cannes Film Festival was the occasion to showcase high-art not serve as a bastion of low-fart.

Upon hearing of the Ajith’s Billa-for-Cannes report, we were reminded of what the British author Theodore Dalrymple wrote in the book Our Culture, What’s Left of It:

To be a man of artistic taste now requires that you have no standards at all to be violated: which, as Ortega y Gasset said, is the beginning of barbarism.

When there are far better movies like Mozhi and Sathum Podaathay, it’s an affront to all notions of fair play to send garbage like Billa to an international film festival. It’s like awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to monsters like Continue Reading…