Meet Li Yang, ‘China’s Elvis of English’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 04.23.08 | 9:51 AM ET
Terrific story in the New Yorker about the Beijing man behind “Li Yang Crazy English,” whose slogans include “Conquer English to Make China Stronger!” Evan Osnos writes that Li is “the world’s only language teacher known to bring students to tears of excitement.” Officials in Beijing have turned to him to teach English to his compatriots before the Olympic Games this summer, but as Osnos writes—and that slogan hints at—it’s about more than language.
The linguist Kingsley Bolton, an authority on English study in China, calls Li’s approach “huckster nationalism.” The most serious charge—one that in recent months has threatened to undo everything Li has built—holds that the frenzied crowds, and his exhortations, tap a malignant strain of populism that China has not permitted since the Cultural Revolution.
“I have seen this kind of agitation,” Wang Shuo, one of China’s most influential novelists, wrote in an essay on Li. “It’s a kind of old witchcraft: Summon a big crowd of people, get them excited with words, and create a sense of power strong enough to topple mountains and overturn the seas.”
The New Yorker also has a slideshow.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
