Going far beyond words

A veteran professor who teaches English as a second language and American studies to China's creme de la creme shares his secrets for mastering the foreign language and analyzing how the United States deals with other countries, write Raymond Zhou and Yang Yang.

Mei Renyi's career trajectory has taken him from language instruction and English literature to American studies and eventually to cross-cultural studies.

The turning point came in 1982, when a Fulbright scholarship enabled him to go to the United States, "to study either American literature or American history". He took up the latter.