Bright sparks

Comments on "Should Beida recruit more recommended students?" (China Daily website, July 9)

It is unfair. Maybe the recommended students are more talented than the exam-takers, but we should remember that the university entrance exam is an effective way for people to get access to high-quality education. We spare no effort to prepare for the exam, so we should all be treated equally.

Zhumaomao

On China Daily website

The door to success is open to all and if you are outstanding you will succeed no matter what.

The recommended students are always very diligent and have excellent academic records, so it's quite understandable for PKU to want to enroll more of them.

As we know, PKU enrolls students through recommendation not only from itself, but also from other prestigious universities.

On the other hand, PKU and other prestigious universities still provide opportunities for students through fair competition. No system is perfect, so just be confident about yourself. If you are talented and enterprising you will be selected by a top university eventually.

iceflames

On China Daily website

Peking University belongs to our nation. So its doors should be open to all students.

Even outstanding students should take the entrance exam.

Lxy

On China Daily website

A fresh look

Comments on Li Xing's column "Rethinking the 'Made in China' label" (China Daily, July 19)

I read Li's article "Made in China" with great interest. I am a South African living in London who happens to be Chinese. I am also a mum, an optometrist and company director.

While growing up in South Africa, "Made in China" always stimulated great pride and excitement among the Chinese folk without regard to quality or hard labor associations. Anything to do with China was considered an achievement as the small community of Chinese there did their utmost to instill a sense of pride in their young and retain the key tenets of their cultural heritage. According to my parents, Chinese never divorced and every single one was strictly heterosexual!

Needless to say in a country dominated by non-Chinese, not only did we youngsters feel like we were the oddest looking lot in the world, we were desperate to belong and a large majority of us ended up completely rebelling and a casualty of our inability to speak Chinese fluently. So we have a group of Afrikaans, English and occasionally Zulu or Xhosa-speaking Chinese South Africans who know more about rugby and barbecues than they do about the yuan.

But life goes in circles and now I have seen some of the world I realize that while I am everything South African, my interest in China has perhaps finally come home albeit via a rather circuitous route.

Vanessa Ho-Yan (Chan Siu May)

Via e-mail

Authors like Sara Bongiorni will continue to be endorsed, just because of the Western world's fear that "China will take over".

Little do they understand about China or the Chinese. It is just strange to them. Nor is the Western world interested to really know about China, and that is the problem.

The Western businessmen traveling there - myself being one of them - have mixed feelings.

They are at the discretion of Chinese complexity. Looking through a "Western" pair of glasses does not help.

Cristian Stefan, Toronto, Canada

Via e-mail

Readers' comments are welcome. Please send mail to Letters to the Editor, China Daily, 15 Huixin Dongjie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100029 China. Send faxes to (86-10) 6491-8377. Send e-mail to opinion@chinadaily.com.cn or letters@chinadaily.com.cn or to the individual columnists. China Daily reserves the right to edit all letters. Thank you.

(China Daily 07/25/2007 page11)