中國網站品牌欄目（頻道）
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Reader's question: Could you explain "gold dust"? My comments: Gold dust literally refers to the fine gold particles lying in, say, any river bed. There are people who make a living from filtering out these small precious pieces using a pan, a pan with tiny holes at the bottom that allows water to run through but keeps silt. They then wash the silt in running water again and again till most sand, mud and other small objects are washed off so that they can spot the remaining yellowish glistening stuff they've been looking for. All that glisters is not gold, unfortunately, as the old tiresome saying goes. Copper, which is much less valuable for instance, produces a similar sparkle. The long and short of it is, even though sand and mud are everywhere around, gold dust is not easy to find and to filter out. Hence figuratively speaking "gold dust" means something that's valuable but rare. In the above story (Andres Iniesta: Barcelona's Once-in-a-Lifetime Guy, by Rob Hughes, New York Times, December 19, 2010), what happened "last week" was that Espanyol fans give most of their applause to Andreas Iniesta, a player from not their own but the visiting team, and not just any visiting team but their bitter rich cross-town rivals FC Barcelona. That's a rarity these days, or "a once-in-life thing", as the author puts it. Iniesta, of course, is a "once in a lifetime kind of guy." You can read the story in full via this link (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/sports/soccer/20iht-SOCCER20.html). Related stories: 本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。 About the author:Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column. |
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