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China and Esperanto

di Alkanadi, 22 luglio 2015

Messaggi: 7

Lingua: English

Alkanadi (Mostra il profilo) 22 luglio 2015 09:42:41

I found this amazing. I didn't know that China was so active in Esperanto.

sudanglo (Mostra il profilo) 22 luglio 2015 09:53:48

The report's from 1986. China and its government have changed a lot since then. I wonder what the same statistics would be now.

white knight (Mostra il profilo) 22 luglio 2015 09:54:14

Alkanadi:I found this amazing. I didn't know that China was so active in Esperanto.
No wonder! Esperanto is easier to learn for Chinese folks than English.

Vestitor (Mostra il profilo) 22 luglio 2015 21:29:12

sudanglo:The report's from 1986. China and its government have changed a lot since then. I wonder what the same statistics would be now.
I suspect that in terms of foreign languages English, and particularly "business English", is likely much more promoted these days in China.

erinja (Mostra il profilo) 23 luglio 2015 13:53:05

China has a big Esperanto community. It is less visible to those of us outside of China because the Chinese Esperanto speakers often lack the means to travel to the international events. There is government support for Esperanto, hence the Esperanto-language service of Chinese radio (http://esperanto.cri.cn). The government clearly sees it as a way to promote China abroad. The news service has articles on Chinese culture and positive human interest stories in China, plus standard boring articles about what the Chinese government is up to. There is a daily radio program in Esperanto, which sounds in theory like a great way to practice your Esperanto by listening to the news every day. But in practice I found that it didn't hold my interest, too many articles about "The governor of bla bla province has announced a new program to promote fisheries in bla bla province", government news of little interest to anyone.

China's government-run Esperanto publishing house has published a pretty good number of books in Esperanto, too. Some have a Communist message, some are just folk tales without any particular message, but books printed in China are pretty inexpensive, so if Chinese culture interests you and you don't mind a bit of propaganda mixed in, it's a good way to add to your Esperanto collection.

Vestitor (Mostra il profilo) 23 luglio 2015 14:48:07

Years ago there were Chinese Esperanto books for sale in the political bookshop in Manchester. I don't know how many of them they ever shifted. I wish I'd bought some now, the shop has long gone. Is there a place to get hold of any Chinese Esperanto books?

As for propaganda, what's the difference if it's Chinese or Western propaganda? Western culture is saturated with political propaganda, but it is subtly presented to look like 'normality'. The Chinese are just less subtle about it.

erinja (Mostra il profilo) 23 luglio 2015 18:08:26

I view propaganda as government-produced or government-funded. Every society shows its values in its literature, but the government-produced stuff tends to be extra heavy-handed and cringe-inducing. I assure you that I have just as little interest in reading propaganda from any side, and I am not particularly interested in reading a self-congratulatory piece about how wonderful any given country is.

For the Chinese books, they are available from mainstream Esperanto book services, though they are not in a particular category. However, the UEA book service has a pretty good search tool that allows you to search by location where the book was published. These are the books sold by the UEA that were published in "Pekino", for example: [url=Ĉinio]eldonitaj en Pekino[/url]

You can also search by publisher, but not all of the books are labeled as to publisher, and some are mixed; this link, for example, takes you to books by the "Fremdlingva eldonejo" of China and also of Vietnam.

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