August 18, 2008 3:07 PM
A building in the fairyland.
I've gotten my hands on a copy of the "Beijing Olympic Games Training
Series: A Conversational English Reader." BOCOG -- the Beijing Olympic
governing body -- is using it as a manual to teach volunteers how to
react to any situation that may arise during the Games. Some of those
situations just happen to be a bit unusual.Today's text is reproduced in its entirety and is not edited. All non-sequiturs and grammatical errors are theirs. The text is titled "Near the Long Corridor" from the "At the Summer Palace" section of the reader. I am not sure whether or not the text is an endorsement by BOCOG for Buddhism. Enjoy:
Foreign athlete #2: Holy Cow! That grand tower looks like a building in the fairyland. The tiles on it are shining. I thought I saw it somewhere before. Oh, yes, in a magazine.
Local volunteer: Most possibly. That's called the Tower of Buddhist Incense, landmark building in the Summer Palace. It attains a height of forty-two meters and its base is twenty-one meters high.
Foreign athlete #2: How beautiful! Let's find a gift shop for some postcards before we get out of here. I love the tower and I will show it to my friends when I get back to the States. They are all crazy about China.
Local volunteer: Well, I love it too. Inside the tower, there is a gilded statue of the so-called thousand-handed Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, and it's English name in Buddhism is too long to remember. It is said that on the first day and the fifteenth day of every month in the lunar calendar, the Empress Dowanger would go there and burn joss sticks.
Foreign athlete #2: Why don't we go and burn some joss sticks and pray, too? I might have got the championship if I had come here several days ago.
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