I've noted that university salaries for expatriate language instructors in China are now competitive with those in South Korea.

In September, my salary was the equivalent of ₩3.15 million, after a health-insurance deduction and not including free accommodation.

The university provides a housing allowance for those who wish to live off-campus, but I'm happy with my campus apartment as it's right next to the beach and my "commute" is a mere ten minutes each way by foot.

I have full autonomy in the classroom and my students are extremely motivated and respectful. I have no libtarded colleagues, either. Even a decade ago, they were taking over my last university in South Korea and were quite nasty.

As for teaching hours, it's just ten hours per week. The cherry on top for September is that the semester starts off with three weeks of military training for freshmen and there are no classes for them during that time.

The "golden age" for university teaching in South Korea is long gone. Here, it's just starting.

On my daily stroll along the Yellow Sea this afternoon, I passed this older gentleman playing a bamboo flute in a grove of pines just off the beach.

He waved at me during a break in playing, so I don't think he minded my recording him.

One of the great things about Yantai is how often one hears music when out and about in the city, from traditional folk song to ballroom-dance music to what you hear here, which could be from a century or more ago.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Yantai is a gem.

In both of my law-student classes here at Yantai University, we recently read a brief history of the English language, followed by group presentations on the etymology of key legal terms in English, as well as important prefixes and suffixes.

Just as "汉语" ("Hànyǔ") or Chinese is the language of the Han people, so was "English" originally the tongue of the Angles, a Germanic tribe who began to arrive in England in large numbers in the 5th Century along with the Saxons and Jutes and over time displace the indigenous Britons.

The Angles themselves were so named as the Romans knew them as the Angli or "people of Angul" due to the hook-like shape of the peninsula whence they hailed (roughly, present-day Schleswig-Holstein, which borders Denmark).

With the Norman Conquest of England in the 11th Century came the introduction of French at the elite level, which gradually influenced the native language still spoken by most commoners. The Renaissance also spurred the adoption of many Latin (and Greek) words by English-speaking elites who absorbed themselves in classical learning.

No doubt, English verbs must be a headache for non-native speakers to learn as there are hundreds of irregular ones with unique past tense and past participle forms.

However, what at first seems illogical about them does, in fact, have a logic of its own: Most irregular verbs in English derive from the original Germanic forms, while the regular ones usually trace back to French or Latin.

Thus, the irregular verb "to run" is of Germanic origin, while the regular verbs "to review" and "to enter" are, respectively, French and Latin in derivation.

At the end of each class on this subject, I likened English to a car: A German engine, Latin body and French interior.

In the heart of Yantai University campus is the lovely "三元湖" ("Sānyuán Hú") or "Three Sources Lake," meant to symbolize the creation of Yantai University along with Peking and Tsinghua Universities (in 1984).

In a similar way, English can also be understood as a "三元语" or "Three Sources Language," all the better to help those learning it stay afloat and, with enough practice, swim easily in it.

This post became too long for Telegram, so I've posted in on Substack instead.

An excerpt:
*So decadent and intellectually barren has liberalism become that few of its champions can even defend it in serious, open debate. On platforms such as X, the default setting is to ban or block critics of liberalism, or defame them with absurd ad-hominem attacks. Time and again, I challenged Robert E. Kelly, S. Nathan Park, Tim Shorrock and many others to defend their ideas; time and again, I was either blocked or met with silence.

The expatriate "intellectual scene" in South Korea is all but dead as liberalism has such a firm chokehold on it that it appears to have lost consciousness. What passes for "serious debate" there is in reality so many self-promoting shills, grifters and charlatans mostly talking past each other. It's one reason why I left*.

I'm unlikely to keep promoting my Substack posts on "free and open" X as they are effectively banned there, and in case there seems to be little interest in on-the-ground reportage or commentary from China, anyway.

Curiously, US-PRC relations continue to be a major story in the US MSM these days, but whenever I push back against propaganda that is of little benefit to anyone except the malevolent elites who have seized control of the US, and could even escalate to outright conflict, I am met mostly with indifference and silence.

Of what use is "free and open" debate if most are too overwhelmed by "content" and distracted to have a serious discussion any more?

I used to publish bestselling books in South Korea and write for newspapers with circulations in the millions; my posts on The Marmot's Hole regularly generated hundreds of comments. Certainly, I feel like I understand the world better than I did a decade or two ago. And yet here we are today.

In any case, I will keep posting if only because at least I still amuse myself.
https://open.substack.com/pub/kingbaeksu/p/ambassador-burns-dumps-on-china?r=19mokn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Exiled King Baeksu

Ambassador Burns Dumps on China

"American diplomacy" proves itself to be anything but yet again.