Interest in Learning Mandarin Soars

http://www.economist.com/node/17522444?story_id=17522444&fsrc=rss

Teaching Chinese
Mandarin's Great Leap Forward
Interest soars in learning China’s official language
Nov 18th 2010 | SINGAPORE | from PRINT EDITION



ON A small street in Singapore’s Chinatown Fu Xianling, the founder of a language-education company called New Concept Mandarin, searches for additional office space. Mr Fu wants to expand his business with the lofty ambition of competing with the industry leader, Rosetta Stone. Demand for his product has increased by 20% over the past two years.

As the Chinese economy surges, so does interest in Mandarin. The Chinese government estimates some 40m people study Mandarin outside the country, up from 30m in 2005. A tight job market in the West is partly responsible. According to a survey in September by Rosetta Stone, 58% of Americans believe the lack of foreign-language skills among native workers will lead to foreigners taking high-paying jobs. “The recession has focused people on where growth is going to come from,” says Tom Adams, the firm’s chief executive. Among existing corporate customers logging into the company’s multi-language programme, the number learning Mandarin increased by 1,800% between 2008 and 2010.

Fred Rao, the founder of eChinese Learning, which offers one-on-one Mandarin instruction through Skype, predicts fierce competition. Taking a page from Mr Rao’s playbook, Rosetta Stone recently launched a new way for its Mandarin students to connect via video links to instructors in China.

Asia remains the core market. The Beijing Language and Culture University Press, the largest publisher of Chinese-language textbooks, says South Korea and Japan are its biggest customers. The number of Indonesians studying in Chinese institutions increased by 42% between 2007 and 2009, according to the Chinese embassy in Jakarta. In September India’s education minister proposed Mandarin classes at state schools.

The question remains whether the Mandarin rush will prove a fad. Japanese and Russian also had “hot” periods, only to recede in popularity. And Chinese can be controversial. With some parents fearful of communist influence, a California school district recently turned down $30,000 per year from the Chinese government to pay for Mandarin classes.

Yet Mandarin ought to continue to grow. In America just 4% of schools teach the language. In Britain, though Mandarin is spreading, the most popular languages by far remain Spanish, French and German. There is a long way to go before China’s main language becomes as widespread as its economic influence.

Greenwich-Based Language School Expands Classes

Greenwich Time
Lisa Chamoff

November 20, 2010

There had already been a full day of school for the children who were busy at work in a small classroom at Second Congregational Church on a recent afternoon.

Still, the small group was buzzing with energy as the kids jumped from an activity with paper and glue sticks, to singing a song, and then playing a game with flashcards.

The entire time, teacher Jing Tan rarely spoke a word of English, encouraging her students to master the correct pronunciation of the Chinese characters they recognized.

It was one of the newest classes for the Chinese Language School of Connecticut, a Greenwich-based nonprofit school that teaches Mandarin Chinese as a second language, with lessons on Chinese culture, to children and adults.

Recently, the eight-year-old program has started to grow, reaching families that, for a variety of reasons, want their children to learn Chinese.

Classes at various levels have been held on Sundays at Eastern Middle School. After hearing feedback from parents, the school decided to add a weekday program, and secured space at Second Congregational Church.

A private tutoring program has also tripled in size since 2007, said Susan Serven, the school's president. It started with 45 students and has grown to about 130.

The school attracts students from a variety of backgrounds. Many have parents who emigrated from China and want their children to learn or retain the language, while some parents have adopted children and want them stay connected with their Chinese heritage.

Others, recognizing China's emerging importance in the global economy, are learning Chinese at local schools and are looking for additional classes and tutoring.

In the winter, the school will be launching a prepatory course for students taking the Advanced Placement Chinese Language and Culture exam, which Serven said doesn't seem to be offered by most test-preparation companies.

"This is another need that has spurred us to expand," she said.

The school's classes range in price from $630 to more than $1,300.

As an executive recruiter, Holly McCarthy said she sees that China has become an economic force. The Westport resident's two sons, 7-year-old Jack and 9-year-old Liam, were simply intrigued by Asian culture by taking martial arts classes. They also learned, when visiting friends in Ohio over the summer, that the public schools in Cleveland had begun teaching Chinese.

"My children heard that and they were fascinated," said McCarthy, after dropping Jack and Liam off at the two-hour-long Level 1 class at Second Congregational.

Greenwich resident Chelsea Kirwan enrolled her 7-year-old twin daughters in the program on the recommendation of one of their teachers at Convent of the Sacred Heart school. The girls, Lilbet and Felicity, already speak fluent French after enrolling in the French American School of New York in Scarsdale, N.Y.

"I think Mandarin is a great language to learn," Kirwan said. "I think it helps women in business."

The program, Kirwan said, produces results.

"They really are there to teach the kids how to speak Mandarin," she said. "This is really a language-immersion program."

McCarthy said she overheard her sons talking to a friend about their classes, which they've been attending for the past two months. When the friend asked them why they were learning Chinese, they said it was so they could have a secret language that their mom didn't understand. Although the boys don't speak Chinese much at home, they seem to be picking it up fast, she said.

"I hope that it increases in popularity," McCarthy said. "I think it's going to be an important thing for our kids to understand over the next 20 years."

NY Times: China Top Home of Foreign Students

China Surges Past India as Top Home of Foreign Students
By TAMAR LEWIN

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/us/15international.html

The number of Chinese students studying in the United States surged 30 percent in the 2009-10 academic year, making China, for the first time, the top country of origin for international students, according to “Open Doors,” the Institute of International Education’s annual report.

The report found that a record high of 690,923 international students came to the United States last year — nearly 128,000 of them, or more than 18 percent, from China. Over all, the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased 3 percent for the 2009-10 academic year.

India, which in recent years had been in the top spot, increased its numbers only slightly, to 104,897 last academic year.

“The number of students from China is booming, because of that booming Chinese economy,” said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the institute. “But India, which also has a booming economy, is only up 1.6 percent. I think one factor is the great number of Chinese families with disposable income, two working parents and only one child, and a determination to invest their money to make sure that child receives the best education possible.”

David B. Austell, director of the Office for International Students and Scholars at New York University, said the Chinese undergraduates came primarily from the large urban areas on China’s coast. Because they are not eligible for the same financial aid as Americans and usually pay full tuition, he said, their growing presence is an indicator of just how many Chinese families are financially strong.

At the University of Southern California, Tony Tambascia, executive director of the Office of International Services, said the number of Chinese students grew substantially last year, but surpassed the number of Indian students for the first time just this fall.

“We’re getting more Chinese master’s students, and dramatically more freshmen,” he said.

According to the report, which is supported by the State Department, the number of students coming to the United States from Saudi Arabia increased almost 25 percent last year, to 15,810, reflecting the Saudi government’s generous aid for studies abroad.

But not all countries sent more students to the United States last year. The number coming from Japan declined 15 percent, and Mexico, Indonesia and Kenya each sent 7 percent to 9 percent fewer students than in the previous year.

Still, Allan Goodman, president of the institute, said the United States continued to host more international students than any other country. And according to the Commerce Department, such students contribute nearly $20 billion to the economy.

While the majority of Chinese students in the United States are still graduate students, the recent growth has been strongest among undergraduates.

Last year, there were 39,921 Chinese undergraduates studying in the United States, a 50 percent increase from the previous year, and more than four times as many as five years earlier.

The Indian experience has been quite different; that country sent 15,192 undergraduates last year, fewer than five years earlier. And the number of Indians coming to the United States for graduate study dropped by almost 4 percent last year

“The educational-advising people say that the job market is so hot in places like Mumbai and Bangalore that students thinking about grad school decide it’s not worth it,” Ms. Blumenthal said, “since they can just go out and get a good engineering job.”

As in past years, the report found that California, with 94,279 international students, hosts far more students from abroad than any other state. The University of Southern California is the institution with the most international students, 7,987 last year.

The report also tracks Americans studying abroad, although those numbers come from a year earlier. In the 2008-9 academic year, 260,327 American students studied abroad, down slightly from 262,416 the previous year.

While Britain, Italy, Spain and France remain the leading destinations, the study found, all four hosted fewer students, with the declines ranging from 2.5 percent to 10.8 percent.

But nontraditional destinations outside Europe gained popularity. Chile, Peru and South Korea all had increases of more than 26 percent, and China, Australia, Costa Rica, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Ecuador, Brazil and New Zealand all hosted more American students than in the previous year.

Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hand and Mind at MoCA

Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind
The Yi Zhi Tang Collection
November 6, 2010-May 2, 2011

Wooden sliding block puzzle, 1930s. Photo by Niana Liu.

China’s rich tradition of puzzles and fascination with puzzling objects is thoroughly embedded in its arts and culture, and has been a popular cultural export to America since the 19th century. The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) presents Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind, curated by Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen.

Over the course of a four-month period, more than 100 objects and images from the curators’ private Yi Zhi Tang (art and intelligence) Collection will be on view at MOCA. Consisting of over 1300 antique Chinese puzzles, books, and graphic materials, the collection dates back from the Song dynasty to the mid-20th century. Many of the puzzles are also objets d’art in the classical tradition and exhibit the highest level of workmanship, including beautifully crafted porcelains, carved ivory, and mother-of-pearl.

Literally translated in Chinese as “intelligence games”, puzzles inspire us to challenge our hands and mind. Visitors young and old will have the opportunity to play with modern reproductions of these classic puzzles, including: the tangram – the game that sparked the world’s first international puzzle craze; the nine-linked rings – an object of interest for mathematicians and computer scientists; and the sliding block puzzle – a challenge in military strategy.

The exhibition is accompanied by an 80-page, full-color catalog; and a full-range of public programs designed for audiences of all ages: guided gallery tours; Family Puzzle Days – workshops for budding puzzlers ages 5-12 years; Puzzler Day for newbies and veterans of the puzzling world; and curator talks with Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen, who have been collecting and documenting the histories of Chinese puzzles since 1997.


Great mention from @nytimes about new MOCA show Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hand and Mind http://ow.ly/352KN

PUZZLING TEAPOTS
Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen call their holdings of 1,400 Chinese puzzles “the art and intelligence collection.” Retired teachers who have homes in Northern California and Beijing, they have spent much of the last 13 years traveling to antiques fairs, auctions, galleries and flea markets to find puzzles dating back 1,000 years.

On Saturday the Museum of Chinese in America in Lower Manhattan will display 100 of their sets alongside videos of traditional puzzle makers and solvers in action.

This married couple have acquired nested cubes, triangles and rings made of silver, jadeite, porcelain, wood and ivory and have researched how they were exported and subjected to scholarly study over the centuries.
Sometimes spending tens of thousands of dollars per acquisition, they also buy trick vessels with hidden compartments. Since around A.D. 960, Chinese artisans have made teapots that can be filled only through bottom holes, and “fairness cups” that leak out of concealed bottom holes if a pourer greedily fills them close to the brim.

“Here’s something we got today,” Mr. Rasmussen said during a recent visit to New York, pulling out a mound of Bubble Wrap he had just picked up at Christie’s. Ms. Zhang sliced open the plastic and revealed a bottom-filling purple pot draped with green leaves, made around 1700. (It cost $6,875 at a Chinese ceramics auction.)

She has been interested in puzzles, she explained, since her childhood in northwest China. During the Cultural Revolution, her father was imprisoned, and the family moved into a warehouse infested by rats. Expelled from school because of her father’s disgrace, she whiled away time making wire puzzles.

“We used them to lock up our storage boxes for food,” she said.

She and her husband plan to donate the collection to a museum, probably in China. Mr. Rasmussen occasionally suggests selling off their lesser examples, but then Ms. Zhang reminds him that she was born in a Chinese year of the dog.
“Once I get my jaw into something, I don’t let go,” she said.

At the Museum of Chinese in America, shelves running the length of the room are piled with reproduction puzzles for visitors to try. (The collectors have trained docents to give hints.) In one display case is a set of nine interlocked jadeite rings that belonged to Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor.

In his thousands of rooms, Ms. Zhang said, “there’s no telling if he ever played with this.”

Join Us at Greenwich's Enchanted Forest!

Please visit our table at this year's The Enchanted Forest event,, sponsored by the Greenwich Junior League, at the Hyatt Old Greenwich.

Crafts, activities for children, holiday boutique, it's a great way to welcome in the holiday season!

For more info: http://www.jlgreenwich.org/?nd=tef09