The willingness of renovating the website had always been incubated, which, was just about to break the shell after viewing Yayoi Kusama (an Japanese artist) ‘s homepage.
Getting up in the “morning”, I spontaneously typed in Google Search: “Multilingual”, for I suspected, that the internet will in the end dominated by international visits, including my site. Were Kusama’s pages written in Japanese, possibly I would not even try automatic translation before closing the tab.
The search result was simple and straightfoward: by installing an all-prepared plugin, you will see a lovely drag-down choice box in your website: Languages, and this action quickly came into effect: An ip address from Puerto Rico redirected from an theme forum chose English without any hesitation. Although it was not a very decent first impression since there were not any valuable blogs under English section, if I was going to add any English translation to a Chinese blog, it would just be a matter of hours of head-scratching.
Chinese have been venerating the internationalization since the beginning of twenty-first century, which is epitomized by the fervor of foreign language learning. One who masters not only English but also other languages would be regarded superior. And it might be the exact reason why I, an elementary school graduate 6 years ago, was so longing for SFLS( Shanghai Foreign Language School ), where I could learn various languages. In an pan-internationalized era, the reality exists where people obtain information without the any language requirement. Just a moment ago, I used twenty minutes of searching and setting up to construct localization for my website. All the electronic devices designed by Apple innately support languages that meet every customer’s need. Translation is no longer served exclusively: If you log onto Google Translate, every undecipherable text or website switches to your mode of understanding. Ironically, however, some people devote themselves posting statuses that are written in minor languages, which, if I want to, are just as clear as black and white after a few mouse-clicks. Though, language talents never obsoletes, but sorrily, the flaunt of language has been discarded by the era of pan-internationalization.
Maybe just a decade ago or two, we Chinese felt how prospective was the word of internationalization, and how interesting were the western people. And now it comes with a “pan” prefix, which people might be unaware of. Pan-internationalization functions for an over-expanded globalization, which is not appropriate to be called “post-“, since itself is still heating up. Back in the days we regarded internationalization as opening a door and watching outside, while now we are totally mixing ourselves in the world’s melting pot.
Food resembles a miniature of globalization. The imagination of teaching foreign friends how to use chopsticks and eat all kinds of outlandish feasts, as well as letting them appreciate the profoundness of the greatest culture on the Earth, had been ingrained in our minds when we were still kids. We did not know about other culture, not even realizing that Japanese, Korean, as far as Thai, Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian people also use chopsticks, but now, we have already lost the opportunity to carry out our “dreams”, since foreigners no longer need to step into Chinese territory in order to taste relishes from every corner of China. They hold chopsticks more accurately than do some of the Chinese generation of 80 and 90s, and they no long complain our favor of eating dogs, representing their esteem for a different food culture.
The pan-internationalized era, however, induces not only intercultural comprehension, but also assimilation of culture. Each year, millions of students from Mainland China, Taiwan, Korea, and India travel through thousands of miles to study in North America, Oceania, and Europe, usually oblivious of the true value of studying abroad. The phenomena, while still being regarded as a new trend by high school and college graduates in China, have already been significant in areas such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, where one can barely find a resumé that is devoid of any oversea traces. The UK and the US have neatly converted themselves from “Imperialism” into “Cultural colonialism.” Is that their culture are so valuable as we have thought?
An influential current now suggests a new term, international sight, which could be interpreted as constructing bridges connecting China’s continual opening up and the world’s general interests, even becoming somehow prophetic. However the problem is, when everybody is joining the crowd aiming for the same trend, the timing turns out to be subtle and volatile. If you are an international student, seeing that besides you, over one hundred students with a virtually same appearance and situation as yours are riding on this flight, what you will feel, could be simply hopeless. It is as if you want to flaunt your experience at Saudi Arabian Pavilion when visiting Shanghai Expo, and you suddenly uncover the fact that tens of thousands of people were waiting on an endless line winding for several thousand metres. TV news do not gloss over this crazy trends. On the screen, parents living in coastal cities send their kindergarten children into international school with seeming non-coincidence. A little girl said this in front of a camera: “I will go to Harvard someday.” Possibly she did not even know where Harvard is, but under the superficial propaganda by the society, she regarded Harvard as merely the word of substitution for something good. Pan-internaitonalization ineluctably brings about the consciousness-raising of each social class, whose blindness on following trends at the same time flopped away the middle classes’ dream of elitism.
To those capitalists, however, pan-internationalization serves to be their exclusive meal. As these young white-collars from the financial world are still regarding the life of shifting from London and New York, the life of updating their sentimentalities on the flights as their petty bourgeois dream, the real entrepreneurs are totally insensible to the airlines with the top services. If they want, they could pin Dubai or Maldive as their next vacation destination, and spend their holidays in the private coastal mansion. However, the true reason why they could prosper within the pan-internationalized era is not those superficialities. Count through the five hundred companies, you will find that none of them is not operating a global business. Not a single business head will agree with a loosing proposition, and for them, global business co-operation will definitely be the combination of maximized interests. Foreign companies that has already settled in China, find this country agreeable with no more than two reasons: the vacancy in the Chinese capital markets and the low-cost labours. Having been developed for 30 years, the market is almost saturated, but the low price of labour is not changing too much. China is ultimately the cat’s paw in this great international game. The over-exploitation will soon backfire: the over-reliance on acting as the world factory could make a devastating blow once the global financial has any instability.
The human society is making progress each day. Zhenghe and Marco Polo in their ages could hardly imagine the efficiency of global communications today, but all of this seems to me a dish of over-cooked rice, as a result of which, we starts to cherish our memories unconsciously…