01-09-2008, 10:36 AM
CHAIRMAN Mao Zedong of the Communist Party of China relied on her as his interpreter in high-level diplomatic meetings and she was a first-hand witness at every step in the normalization of Sino-American diplomatic relations in the 1970s.
Her place in history is recorded in the famous, single photograph of Chairman Mao's meeting with former US President Richard Nixon, in which she is sitting to the right behind the leader as his interpreter. She repeated this role countless times in the early 1970s.
But Tang Wensheng, the woman considered one of China's elite interpreters, could hardly speak any Chinese when she first returned to her motherland from America in 1952. Born in New York, Tang was known by her English name "Nancy" among Americans and lived in the United States with her family until she was nine years old.
Her father, Tang Mingzhao, was the first Chinese to become under-secretary-general of the United Nations. In lower Manhattan's Greenwich Village, Tang's was one of the few families in a community mainly populated by young, single residents.
She reveled in the experience of growing up in the milieu of American culture, even accompanying neighbors to experience the annual Labor Day parade. Profound family and community influence also fed young Tang's early development and she grew up with an admiration for the new People's Republic of China.
http://tinyurl.com/6jyzpp
Fuente: http://www.inttranews.net
Her place in history is recorded in the famous, single photograph of Chairman Mao's meeting with former US President Richard Nixon, in which she is sitting to the right behind the leader as his interpreter. She repeated this role countless times in the early 1970s.
But Tang Wensheng, the woman considered one of China's elite interpreters, could hardly speak any Chinese when she first returned to her motherland from America in 1952. Born in New York, Tang was known by her English name "Nancy" among Americans and lived in the United States with her family until she was nine years old.
Her father, Tang Mingzhao, was the first Chinese to become under-secretary-general of the United Nations. In lower Manhattan's Greenwich Village, Tang's was one of the few families in a community mainly populated by young, single residents.
She reveled in the experience of growing up in the milieu of American culture, even accompanying neighbors to experience the annual Labor Day parade. Profound family and community influence also fed young Tang's early development and she grew up with an admiration for the new People's Republic of China.
http://tinyurl.com/6jyzpp
Fuente: http://www.inttranews.net