二十几岁嘛，不能轻视年青人。周瑜出身骑兵，才十六岁，你们不要摆老资格。

They are only 20-odd years old. Don’t take the young people lightly. Chou Yu started as a cavalryman. He was only 16 when he became the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Wu. Please don’t think that you are old timers.

old timer是什么意思？

My comments:

An old timer is someone old and especially senior in ranking and experience.

As name suggests, an old timer is someone who has been around for a long time, and therefore experienced a lot during “old times”, i.e. times long gone by.

In other words, an old timer has been there, done that, as they say.

In real life, that’s exactly what old timers like to brag about, that they have been there, seen all and done all that.

Take what they have to say with a liberal pinch of salt. A lot of times, you see, they’re just talking, sometimes in a mere attempt to bully the young. Many of them haven’t done anything at all, if all truth be told, even though that fact will never stop them talking.

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本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（张欣） 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.