「全浸英语阅读」杨百万传奇 Millionaire Yang
全浸阅读= TotalImmerseDynamiceReading=TID
How to eat a crab
China’s “first shareholder”, known as “Yang Millions”
how to eat a crab?如何吃螃蟹？或者说第一个吃螃蟹的人是怎么吃螃蟹的？
中国金融市场化30年，杨百万算是一个时代的象征，a symbol, an icon， 管中规豹，从中可窥中国资本市场这一个豹子的足印，the paw of the panther.
p1
IF YOU HAD been riding on one of China’s crammed, rickety green trains in 1989, bouncing in a hard-seat carriage, you might have noticed Yang Huaiding sitting nearby. Or you might not. He had taken pains not to stand out, wearing drab clothes and carrying a faded mock-leather travel bag. The black-rimmed glasses, messy hair and stained teeth were his customary look. If he was smoking more than usual, and wiping more sweat, it was because in the bag, layered in newspaper, he had thousands of yuan in ten-yuan notes. He needed a police escort and, at times, he hired one.
▷ride on one of China's crammed, rickety green trains
坐着绿皮火车；
-crammed:
crowded/stuffed/packed/loaded/jammed/filled/loaded/brimming
crammed形容拥挤,特别在交通工具上, 20210319的people版块在绿皮火车上拍照40年的Wang Fuchun里有这么一句：
✍Onboard, all was chaos. Huge bags were crammed into the luggaeg racks. -TE20210319-People-Wang Fuchun.
✍When they left the plane the passengers were asked to keep six feet apart as they filed down the steps before they reached the bottom, whereupon they were crammed onto a packed shuttle bus.
crammed onto a packed shuttle bus被塞到人挤人的摆渡车里。20210312-Business-Bartleby
✍Pure value baskets are groaning with finnancial firms;growth indices are crammed with asset-light technology firms.
-20190206-Heaven can wait.
-rickety:not strong or stable and likely to break摇摇欲坠
ragged/broken/damage/worn-out/dingy/wrecked/ruined/
杨百万坐着crammed and ricketly green-skined train绿皮小火车，虽然没有吃着火锅唱着歌。bouncing in a hard-seated carriage, bouncing 一路颠着屁股的硬座
▷He had taken pains not to stand out, wearing drab clothes and carrying a faded mock-leather travel bag. The black-rimmed glasses, messy hair and stained teeth were his customary look.
高手出场，必定不走寻常路。
-wearing drab clothes 毫不起眼的衣服；
-carring a faded mock-leather travel bag褪色皮革旅行包
-black-rimmed glasses 黑框眼镜
-messy hair and stained teeth 发如乱草，牙藏烟垢
were his customary look daily/normal look 大隐隐于市
▷If he was smoking more than usual, and wiping more sweat, it was because in the bag, layered in newspaper, he had thousands of yuan in ten-yuan notes.
layered in newspaper 《天下无贼》中傻根的六万块也是包在一层层的报纸后再放在包里
escort-attendant/guard/guide/companion
10元面额的国库券
♚His uprising-80年代末的绿皮火车人造革皮包，极有年代感的出场
p2
He was travelling to Hefei, in Anhui province, from Shanghai, his home town, to buy Chinese government bonds. In 1988 the Communist regime, needing to rebuild the economy and shore up its state-owned enterprises, had decided in a limited way to let the public become investors. Bonds could be freely traded, at first, in only seven cities. But Shanghai and Hefei, two of the seven, were only a night’s train ride apart. And Mr Yang had learned, from intense scouring of local papers in the public library, that bonds priced at 94 yuan in relatively poor Anhui, where collective farmers were getting them as part of their wages, were selling at quite a bit more in Shanghai. Hence the travel-bag, containing (since he had no chequebook) a large wodge of his savings.
动词词组 If you shore up something that is weak or about to fail, you do something in
例：The democracies of the West may find it hard to shore up their defences.西方的民主国家可能发现很难加固自己的防御。
▷intense scouring of local paper in the public library
还是要努力学习啊
scour-comb/dig through/ransack
collective farmer-集体所有制农民
▷a large wodge of his savings
wodge-a bulky mass or chunk(British)
100元面值国库券
♚context-时势造英雄
P3
He was the first man in China to do long-distance bulk trading in government bonds, making a million yuan by it, his first “bucket of gold”. And he had also been the first to buy them. Most others were wary, even afraid, of this bizarre capitalist venture, but he was not. He liked the old saying that the first man to suppose a crab might be edible was either very forward-looking or very hungry. He was both, and later, when he had become a famous name in investing, his business card declared: “Learn from those who have the courage to eat crab...and make friends with them!”
▷first bucket of gold所谓的
第一桶金
▷bizarre capitalist venture
bizarre-strikingly out of the ordinary/eccentric/offbeat
▷He liked the old saying that the first man to suppose a crab might be edible was either very forward-looking or very hungry.
suppose (that) a crab might be edible(eatable)注意suppose的用法
▷Learn from those who have the courage to eat crab...and make friends with them! 这一句好像也并没有过时
♚The courage to eat the crab
p4
On April 21st 1988, therefore, he had been at the doors as the bond sale started, with 20,000 yuan (then $5,400) saved from his job as a warehouse-keeper at the Shanghai Ferroalloy Factory and from his wife’s business ventures on the side. That morning he put his money into a single bond; in the afternoon he sold it at a profit of 800 yuan, or more than his annual salary. He was hooked. When in 1990 the government ordered trading to be done through two national stock exchanges, he sailed into the Shanghai securities market as if born to it. His first purchase was 2,000 shares in a maker of television tubes, bought for 100 yuan each and sold in six months for more than 800. Another bucket of gold. He had long since given up the factory for a private trading room in an investment firm where, fortified by giant tea-jars and countless Double Happiness cigarettes, he watched and played the market all day.
▷Ferroalloy 铁合金
▷on the side
1. 作为兼职/正事以外/作为副业
✍His job at the hospital did not pay much, so he found another on the side.他在医院的工资不高，因此他另外找了份兼差。
✍She is a bank teller and works as a waitress on the side.她是一个银行出纳员，同时又兼职当一名服务。
2.[便餐柜台用语]作为配菜
✍I would like an order of eggs with toast on the side,please.我想来一份配有吐司的蛋。
3.婚外相好
✍He is married，but also has a woman on the side.他结婚了，但在婚外还有个相好的女人。
4.私下里，秘密地
✍I’m telling you this on the side.我是私下里跟你诉说此事。
▷fortify:brace/formarm/strengthen/steel
♚He stepped forward
p5
By now his name was Yang Baiwan, Millions Yang, and crowds of eager Chinese punters jostled to follow his example. If a warehouse-keeper with only an elementary education, living in a one-room flat, could make such a fortune in the markets, so could they. They hung on his advice, besieging him in the street and at his office door in lunch-breaks, clamouring for tips. He had plenty: “When the front of the exchange is full of bicycles, sell.” “The only money you really have is in your pocket.” “Hunt the bottom, avoid the top.” He wrote five books, gave lectures, and in 1993—when the Shanghai market got too frothy, and he prudently dumped his stock when the index hit 1,500, thereby missing the inevitable crash—was hired as a professor. Though institutional investors rapidly took over from amateur traders, China’s leap to becoming the world’s second-largest stockmarket was largely spurred by people like him.
▷punters jostled to follow his example
punters-garmbler/better
jostle-to force one's way, push, bulldoze, 名词还有扒手的意思
▷besiege:to surround, to blockade
▷clamouring him for tips
clamour-a violent shouting
♚He successed and made followers
p6
Wealth did not seem to change him much. After his first windfall he treated himself to some fancy foreign cigarettes and shared them round the factory. He bought a sharp suit or two. But a polo shirt or an anorak was more his style, and he carried on living for some time with his wife and son in the one-room flat where, early on, he had spread out his profits in bundles all over the bed.
His fans called him the Stock God, riding the markets like a rip tide or striding boldly through its ravening flames. He viewed it more like ordinary life (his entire life), with many downs as well as ups. A chunky set of worry beads was also on his desk. When in 2007 on state TV he recommended PetroChina stocks, which then dived, he vowed not to give his tips so casually again. When some people complained, as they loudly did, that his Millions Software didn’t work and that his investment system made them no money, he shrugged. It was no good treating the market like a casino. You had to study it constantly, the companies, the conditions, the mood, before you jumped.
▷windfall:godsend/boon/benefit
▷anorak:a usually pullover hooded jacket long enough to cover the hips
▷he had spread out his profits in bundles all over the bed
那个年代的财富故事都有类似情节，俞床垫深藏三千万，杨百万人民币铺床
▷riding the markets like a rip tide or striding boldly through its ravening flames 所谓的赴汤蹈火
-rip tide-a strong usually narrow surface current flowing outward from a shore that results from the return flow of waves and wind-driven water
-raven-to swallow and eat greedily
♚From an investor to an advocator
p7
He also closely watched what the government was doing. His big break in 1988 had come from a surprising change of policy. Another might come in the very next communiqué out of a plenary session of the Central Committee. And he wanted to be double-sure his rampant capitalist doings stayed within Communist rules. As a teenager, born in “new China” under the red flag, he had been a Red Guard, struggling gamely to enforce a traffic edict in Shanghai that revolutionary red meant “Go”, not “Stop”. Now he fretted that what he was doing, urging on the economy by buying cheap and selling dear, was profiteering and therefore a crime. Among his many firsts was the first voluntary trip by a Chinese man to a tax office (his father had worked in one), to ask whether he owed any tax on his bond sales. The sweet answer was no.
▷communiqué-bulletin
▷plenary-fully attended or consitituted by all ebtitled to be present
▷fretted-worried
♚His worries
p8
In fact, he was fairly sure he was a hero of the people. Chinese state TV said as much in 1998, when he was named “Man of the 20th Anniversary of China’s Reform and Opening Up”. And he made the case himself. The revolution’s goal, he said, was to make people rich, and that was what a stockmarket did. It was a socialist university of finance without walls; anyone could play it, learn from it and become as rich as he was, or richer. He had set the example, picked up the crab, boiled it, cracked it open and feasted. Then all China had shared it and immediately decided that they loved it, too.
▷feast-an elaborate and usually abundant meal often accompanied by a ceremony or entertainment : banquet
♚He made a case for Chinese grassroot
