When and where did I find this word?
I found this word in a short passage designed to assess student reading comprehension. The passage was on a PSAT review website. The passage is about a young girl conflicted with not feeling Chinese nor American. She was born in China and immigrated to the United States. The word was in the following segment of the passage:
President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China
in February 1972 made a visit seem possible
for me. That summer, China cracked open the
"bamboo curtain" that separated it from the
West, allowing a small group of Chinese
American students to visit the country
as a goodwill gesture to the United States.
What does this word mean?
According to http://www.wikipedia.org/, the bamboo curtain was a euphamism for the East Asian version of the Iron Curtain. As a physical boundary, it was marked by the borders around the Communist states of East Asia, in particular those of the Peoples' Republic of China, during the Cold War.
What is my familiarity with this word?
I had never seen this word before encountering it in the passage. When I saw it in the passage I circled it so that I would look up the definition later, but it did make me think of the Iron Curtain. Knowing the history behind the Iron Curtain and knowing that China was cut off from the rest of the world for many years, and considering that China is known for its uses of bamboo, I assumed that the bamboo curtain was similar to the Iron Curtain, but instead of the Eastern Europe, it referred to Eastern Asia.
Do I want to know this word and why?
I'm glad that I know what this phrase means but I don't think it's is a phrase I couldn't live without. Knowing it expands my vocabulary, and therefore, my writing skills but I don't think it's a vital phrase to know.
Do I want other people to know this word?
Because this word was found in a PSAT review reading passage, it is important that student's and their instructor's know this word.
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