The Astronaut Farmer Straight Story" and came up with something profound in its simplicity . . . The Polishes set up a classic David and Goliath situation, leaving no question of whom the audience will root for. There are sufficient surprises along the way, so the ending is far from predictable. "The Astronaut Farmer"'s goofy quality makes it totally endearing. It's also super entertaining." Steve Dollar of the "New York Sun" said, "Even for a comedy with dramatic drive, "The Astronaut Farmer" demands that the audience suspend its disbelief on multiple fronts . . . What is believable, however, is the passion of
Chinese as a foreign language Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones dabbled in it; instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor. Local Chinese variants were still widely used up until a Qing dynasty decree in 1909 that mandated Mandarin as the official language of