You're reading a post titled “A profile of Li Yang” from the archives of Big Contrarian. It was originally published on April 24th, 2008 at 01:00 AM. If you enjoy it, you should subscribe to this site’s RSS feed, or its Twitter page.

A profile of Li Yang, a Tony Robbins-esque figure in China who sells the same personal-power sugar water with a nice mixture of jingoistic sentiment and Western paranoia. By teaching them English:

He is China’s Elvis of English, perhaps the world’s only language teacher known to bring students to tears of excitement. He has built an empire out of his country’s deepening devotion to a language it once derided as the tongue of barbarians and capitalists. His philosophy, captured by one of his many slogans, is flamboyantly patriotic: “Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”

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