Online Class Notes (Mike)

potential topics for writing:
What’s the significance of “May 4th Movement”?
How are young people today different from the last generation?
What kind of food are disliked by foreigners?
What kind of foreign food do you dislike and why?

Origin of “May 4th Movement”

The so-called “May 4th Movement” or “new culture” movement began in China around 1916, following the failure of the 1911 Revolution to establish a republican government, and continued through the 1920s. Its importance equals if not surpasses the more commonly known political revolutions of the century. The movement articulated the contempt for traditional Chinese culture felt by many Chinese intellectuals. These intellectuals blamed traditional culture for the dramatic and rapid fall of China into a subordinate international position, and maintained that China’s cultural values prevented China from matching the industrial and military development of Japan and the West. The May 4th Movement takes its name from the massive popular protest that took place in China in May 1919, following the announcement of the terms of the Versailles Treaty that concluded WWI. According to the treaty, Germany’s territorial rights in China were not returned to the Chinese, as had been expected, but were instead turned over to the Japanese. The outpouring of popular outrage coalesced in a new nationalism with repeated cries for a “new culture” that would reinstate China to its former international position. The way out of China’s problems, many believed, was to adopt Western notions of equality and democracy and to abandon the Confucian approach which stressed hierarchy in relationships and obedience. Science and democracy became the code words of the day.

A Foreigner’s Encounter with “Pi Dan”

My first encounter with the delicacy known in Chinese as pi dan (“skin-eggs”), and in English as “thousand-year-old eggs”, was dreadful. Friends had invited me for dinner at a famous Hong Kong restaurant, and we were offered them, sliced in half with a dressing of ginger and vinegar, as a so-called appetiser.

They leered up at me from the plate like the eyeballs of some nightmarish monster. Their albumens were a filthy, translucent brown, their yolks an oozy black, ringed with a layer of greenish, mouldy grey. About them hung a faint haze of sulphur and ammonia. I tried one, just to be polite, but was so aghast at its appearance that I found it hard to swallow, and I felt nauseous afterwards. To make matters worse, a slick of black slime from the yolk clung to my chopsticks, threatening to contaminate everything else I ate. I tried surreptitiously to wipe them on the tablecloth.

Since then, I have come to love pi dan, and I regularly inflict them on guests at my London dinner parties. A little psychological preparation generally helps. Think of them as the Chinese equivalent of blue cheese, I suggest to skeptical friends. Mouldy old milk is a pretty disgusting idea, but isn’t it delicious?

I find that a blindfold can also be useful because it’s the appearance of the pi dan that is so off-putting, rather than their taste. And if you allow the ammoniac aromas to disperse before you serve them, your guests won’t suspect anything. “It tastes kind of…eggy,” says Stephen, when I feed him, blind, with a good slice of pi dan. “Nice, reminds me of mayonnaise,” says Sarah. It is only when they are allowed to open their eyes that they are revolted, and amazed.

Vocabulary

period  .
comma  ,
question mark  ?
exclamation point  !
quotation marks  “”
colon  :
semicolon  ;
ellipsis  …
apostrophe  ‘
parenthesis  ()
angle brackets  <>
slash  /
pound key  #

italicize (v) to put words in italics

premium (adj.) 优质的
We offer a more premium service to VIP members.

Grammar

❎“Any further delay”, she said, “would result in a lawsuit.”
✅“Any further delay,” she said, “would result in a lawsuit.”

She told us she would be spending her birthday in Venice (Italy, not California). (Unfortunately, we weren’t invited.)

it’s too fat.
junk food is fattening. 

In China market,
In Chinese market,

broadly speaking = speaking in a broader sense

What do you really want?
What are you after?
It depends on what your priority is.