I didn’t start taking Chinese until my junior year, but I had heard of the venerable Mai-laoshi well before I took any classes from him–friends of mine who took Chinese 101 freshman year had been telling Chuck Norris-style Mark Hansell jokes for years (e.g., “The dinosaurs looked at Mark Hansell the wrong way once. You know what happened to them.”). Historical Linguistics was one of my favorite classes at Carleton, and Mai-laoshi was an excellent and extremely patient advisor as I worked my way towards eventually, finally finishing my comps project and writing that paper. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy your well-earned retirement!