Editor,

I appreciate your comments about age discrimination and support them completely. At age 65 I work and teach at a large Beijing university which hired me after some concern about my age.

I teach subjects in which my many years of experience are very useful. I teach Managerial Economics, Business Analysis, Intellectual Property Law and Business English.

As a teacher, I am much more valuable to my students because of my many years of experience as a lawyer and as a businessman.

During a recent visit to Hong Kong, I was impressed by posters in the subway system which said "Consider experience not age when hiring."

As you know and pointed out in your article, experience is not something which can be acquired without years of life.

As a lawyer in the United States for many years, I know that laws against employment discrimination do not fix the problems but at least they indicate that government is opposed to such discrimination.

Recently Beijing was host to a number of Nobel laureates. Not a single one of them was under the age of 60.

Some have said that youth is "wasted" on the young. Experience should not be wasted simply because it is something that the old have and the young do not.

Jim Gaylord, Beijing

(China Daily 09/26/2005 page4)