China Pace University Business School Trip

Great blog with highlights from current students' and professors' trip.

http://dysoncollege.blogs.pace.edu/

Chinese Language School of Connecticut Elects New Board

Press Release

For immediate release


FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Susan Serven, Chinese Language School of Connecticut
203/918.8085
susan.serven@chineselanguageschool.org
please visit our web site: www.chineselanguageschool.org

Visit us on Facebook: facebook.com/ChineseLanguageSchoolofConnecticut


Chinese Language School of Connecticut Announces New Board

-- Professionals from Connecticut and Westchester to help expand program’s success in bringing Chinese to students --



“CLSC is entering it’s 10th year with an extremely competent, very dedicated Board of Directors, and we’re pleased to be helping the organization continue to develop its programs and expand its reach, ” Pelham resident and CLSC Board co-Chair, Jeffay Chang and Harrison resident and CLSC Board co-Chair Darwei Kung.


RIVERSIDE, CT, June 15, 2011 – The Chinese Language School of Connecticut (www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org), the non-profit Riverside, CT-based provider of Chinese language programs to students, schools and corporations, has elected their new Board of Directors for the upcoming year.

Newly elected co-Chairs are Harrison resident Darwei Kung and Pelham resident Jeffay Chang.

Jeffay Chang (Co-Chairman) Jeffay serves as the East Coast Trust Strategist for the Goldman Sachs Trust Companies. He was named Executive Vice President with responsibility over national marketing and sales in 2008. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in May 2004, Jeffay was a Corporate Vice President in the Private Wealth Services Group of UBS Financial Services where he provided counseling and planning services for ultra high net worth clients in such areas as wealth transfer and philanthropic planning, stock option exercise planning, and hedging and monetizing concentrated equity positions.
Prior to UBS Financial Services, Jeffay was a Financial Planner in the Financial Planning Group of US Trust and before that was a Trust Officer in the Trust Settlement Department of US Trust. Jeffay obtained his B.A. from Brandeis University and J.D. from Fordham University School of Law. He is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, New York State Bar Association, New York Bankers Association, Estate Planning Council of New York City and the Westchester Estate Planning Council.

Darwei Kung (Co-Chairman) Darwei is a Portfolio Manager for fixed income and commodity investment funds for Deutsche Asset Management. Prior to his current career in investment management, Darwei spent over 10 years in the telecommunications industry in a variety of professional and management roles in engineering, product management, strategic planning, and business development. Darwei received his bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle, and received his MBA and Masters in Computational Finance degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. Darwei lives in Harrison, New York with his wife and son.

Cynthia Chang Scanlan (Director) - Cynthia Chang was born in Taipei, Taiwan and moved to New York City at the age of six, learning English after Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese. She graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and received a B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked in real estate and banking in New York City. Her husband, Brian Scanlan, founded a software company, and Cynthia joined the company soon after to manage administrative operations and facilities. The company had an initial public offering in 2000 at which time, Cynthia left to concentrate on family and community service in Greenwich, having moved there in 1997. She has been a board member at the YMCA of Greenwich since 2001, serving as the annual campaign chairman, Facilities Committee chair, and currently as Secretary of the Board. She also served as the First Selectman's representative on the Board of Trustees of the Greenwich Library, and is active with her alma mater, chairing the University of Pennsylvania's Secondary School committee in Greenwich. Cynthia lives in Greenwich with her husband and two children, Kevin, 18, who recently graduated Brunswick School and will be attending the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, and Paula, 11, who attends Greenwich Country Day School.

Dr. Sue Chang, M.D. (Director) is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she received her B.S., followed by her M.D. degree at Michigan State University. She completed her residency training in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Nephrology at Yale University where she served as a research fellow in the genetics of hypertension. She is in private practice with Metabolism Associates of New Haven, CT.

Joab Tjiungwanara (Director) is a Risk Manager with General Electric and has worked extensively in the credit and market risk area at GE Corporate Treasury. He is a graduate of University of Bremen, Germany (Electrical Engineering) and University of Rochester (MBA in Finance). Joab is an overseas Chinese who was born in Indonesia, went to Germany after high school and came to the US for graduate school. He speaks fluent Mandarin, German, English and is conversant in Indonesian.

Susan Serven (Director) - Susan has been with CLSC since the school’s founding in May 2002. Susan is a graduate of Pace University (BBA, Marketing) and Fairfield University (MBA, Finance, International Business, 2011). She has held positions in global marketing at Lever Bros. Co., and Save the Children Federation, and as Special Events Director for the American Cancer Society. Susan founded the Chopstix program in 1998 so her daughters and other children could learn Chinese; all Chopstix proceeds were donated to help fund various non- profit groups working with Chinese orphanage programs. She continued running Chopstix until it joined CLSC in 2003. Susan and her husband Lawrence adopted their daughters Emily in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China in August 1996, and Becky in Gao Ming City, Guangdong Province, in October, 2000. They live in New Canaan, CT.

Thomas K. Myers, Jr., (Director) Tom is the Director of Sales and Marketing for FocusVision Worldwide based in Stamford, CT. A graduate of Bucknell University with a B.A. in Political Science, Tom spent his early career in account service with New York based advertising agencies. During this time he met his Taiwan born wife Katy. Since then Tom has held sales and marketing positions for several international companies. Tom’s interest in Chinese language increased quickly with the birth of his daughter, Emily. “I have always believed a second language to be a useful tool. But a second language with ties to one’s heritage is a gift that should not be missed. My goal is to help CLSC continue its efforts to make learning Chinese as enjoyable and satisfying as possible”. Tom lives in Redding, CT with his wife and daughter.

For information on the Chinese Language School of Connecticut’s weekday and weekend language programs, including their Before and After School programs, special workshops. lectures, events, private tutoring, online learning, and their corporate language program, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org. For interesting articles on Chinese language learning and Chinese culture, please visit http://GreenTeaPop.blogspot.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/ChineseLanguageSchoolofConnecticut


* * *

CLSC and 7th Annual St. Jude's Salsa Fest

Thanks to CLSC parent Soraya Martino and the 7th Annual St. Jude's Salsa Fest for allowing CLSC to participate in their festivities this year!

http://www.ctsalsafest.com/St_Jude.html

For more information on the Salsa Fest (held over Memorial Day weekend, in Stamford), or for information on the Chinese Language School of Connecticut's programs, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.

10 Extraordinarily Useful Chinese Phrases

From giving a compliment to refusing that extra helping of food, Jocelyn Eikenburg supplies 10 practical Mandarin phrases.

From: http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/10-extraordinarily-useful-mandarin-chinese-phrases/

(Want to learn more useful Chinese phrases? Whether you're planning on moving to China to start a business, or are just planning on a vacation there, contact us at info@ChineseLanguageSchool.org to find out about our customized tutoring programs, classes for adults, corporate Chinese, and new online learning program!)

You’re just as likely to hear “Ni Hao” as “Hello” in my home. After living in China for five and a half years, I returned to the US with a Chinese husband, the fluency to be a freelance Chinese translator, and a heaping rice bowl of expressions in Mandarin.

If you’re traveling to China and looking to dig your own linguistic chopsticks into Chinese culture, I recommend these 10 extraordinarily useful phrases.

1. Nǐ zhēn niú!
“You’re outstanding!”

In China, you can actually compare someone to a cow (niú) to compliment his outstanding character. Yao Ming is definitely niú, and so is anyone who scores you train tickets after they’re “sold out” or tries the baijiu liquor sold in plastic squeeze bottles in grocery stores.

2. Yìqǐ chīfàn, wǒ qǐngkè.
“Let’s go out to eat, my treat.”

In China, eating together is how people build and maintain good relationships. So if you want to make a new friend, ask a favor, or thank someone, do it as the Chinese do — over a lunch or dinner on your Chinese yuan.


Photo by vikkies
3. Méi bànfǎ, rén tàiduō.
“There’s nothing you can do, too many people.”

In a country of 1.3 billion people, it only takes a small percentage of them to wreck your trip. When my Chinese husband and I traveled to Beijing during the national holiday in October, we spent half the day slogging through a mob that stretched across Tian’anmen Square just to get into the Forbidden City. I’ve also had to stand on crowded trains because I couldn’t get a seat and, while living in Shanghai, experienced my share of being sandwiched between anonymous butts and groins on rush-hour subway cars.

4. Nǎlǐ, nǎlǐ!
“Not me!” (lit. “where, where!” — for deflecting compliments)

Confucian values — such as modesty — still run strong in China, so people don’t say “thank you” when praised about anything. The Chinese, however, assume foreigners like you do the opposite. This phrase is guaranteed to surprise your new Chinese friends and get a good smile out of them.

5. Yǒu yuán qiānlǐ lái xiānghuì.
“We have the destiny to meet across a thousand miles.”

Chinese people believe love and destiny go hand in hand – which is why my Chinese husband loves describing our relationship with this phrase. It’s best for romantic situations, and could even be a poetic pickup line.


Ceiling of Temple of Heaven and Earth. Photo by Lall
6. Wā! Zhōngguó de biànhuà hǎo dà! Zhēnshì fāntiān fùdì!
“Whoa! China is changing so much! It’s as if heaven and earth changed places!”

Shanghai’s Pudong District, with a skyline straight out of a science-fiction flick, used to be rural farmland before the 1990s. Until the 1980s, the high-rise miracle of Shenzhen was just another tiny village on the South China Sea known for fresh fish and oysters.

Every year, China races to build more bridges, buildings, high-speed train lines and subway routes, changing the landscape faster than a speeding Beijing taxi driver. This expression is great for repeat visitors to China and anyone blown away by the pace of development.

7. Zhēnde! Wǒ yìdiǎn dōu búkèqile!
“Really! I’m not being polite at all!”

Perfect for when people keep piling kung pao chicken into your bowl long after you’re full, or pouring you glass after drunken glass of baijiu — and think you’re just saying “búyào” (“I don’t want it”) to be polite.

Once, when a Chinese friend insisted I drink another round of Tsingdao, I had to repeat this phrase over and over while shielding my glass from his swinging beer bottle. Be ready to battle for your stomach and sobriety.

8. Fēi xià kǔgōngfū bùkě.
“It requires painstaking efforts.”

Some 5,000 tumultuous years of history have taught the Chinese that nothing comes easy. People usually say this when faced with any challenge, such as taking the national college entrance exams or pounding the pavement for a job.

It’s useful for climbing China’s mountains, squeezing into crowded transport, or walking into one of the noxious bathrooms at the train stations.

9. Bùhǎoyìsi, yǒushì. Yàozǒule.
“I’m sorry, I have something to do. I must go.”

Chinese people prefer to be vague about the details — which means you never have to explain why you need to leave right now. It’s ideal for uncomfortable situations of any kind. Add another “bùhǎoyìsi” at the end if you feel a little guilty for bolting.

10. Wēiwēi zhōnghuá, yuányuán liú cháng!
“China is awesome [in size], and has a long history!”

Show your love for the Middle Kingdom by praising two things that make the Chinese extra proud: their large country and nearly 5,000 years of history. Shout out this expression on the summit of Huangshan, from a watchtower on the Great Wall, or overlooking that grand vault of Terracotta Warriors.

Next time you’re in Beijing, Shanghai and beyond, see if you can use all 10 of these expressions. You would definitely be niú in my book.

New Online Chinese and AP Classes offered by Chinese Language School of Connecticut

Chinese Language School of Connecticut Opens Registration for Fall 2011

-- New Online Learning Program New for 2011 / 2012 Year--


RIVERSIDE, CT May 1, 2011 -- The non-profit Chinese Language School of Connecticut (www.chineselanguageschool.org) has announced that registration for its Fall 2011 programs is currently open. The school, which teaches Mandarin Chinese as a second language to students ages 18 months and up, uses an interactive, conversationally-based approach, and welcomes students from all backgrounds and every level, from beginner through advanced.

CLSC’s principal, Daisy Chen Laone, noted, “CLSC offers students a unique opportunity to explore Chinese language and culture through innovative, hands-on, age-appropriate programs. Students do not need to have prior experience in Chinese in order to attend. We offer interactive, engaging, customized programs, which are designed to teach Mandarin Chinese to non-Chinese-speaking students using U.S. teaching methods.”

Ms. Laone continued, “CLSC faculty members are all native speaking teachers who are required to undergo a rigorous training process of a minimum of 75 hours per year, in order to make Chinese language learning fun for younger students, engaging and exciting for elementary school students, and fairly rigorous for older students wishing to take Chinese in high school and beyond. We have designed our curriculum to include benchmarks and measurable objectives which allow all students to become as proficient as possible within set timeframes, while engaging their interest in learning about a culture which is more than 4,000 years old.”

New for 2011 is CLSC’s online Homework Help program, and new AP Chinese classes.

CLSC Prinicpal Daisy Chen Laone explained, “CLSC’s Homework Help program is designed to offer customized, online assistance for students learning Chinese. These online sessions are taught by CLSC-trained, native speaking Chinese instructors, who can assist current CLSC students with assignments they are working on, or can help them practice their pronunciation, and gain confidence with their conversational skills.

"We are also pleased to announce our newly-designed AP Chinese Language and Culture Exam Preparation Course. This prep course is designed to supplement what students are already learning in their AP Chinese class at school. It provides students with the extensive language skills practice and broad cultural exposure they need to help them prepare for the AP Chinese exam. According to the College Board, "The AP Chinese Exam assesses students' interpersonal communication skills, their abilities to present and interpret language in spoken and written forms, and their functional familiarity with Chinese culture."

For more information, or to register, please visit www.chineselanguageschool.org.

Stamford residents Hanna Martino (10 years old) and Gianna Martino (6), when asked why they liked to go to CLSC, and why they think learning Chinese is important, replied,

Hanna: "I like going to CLSC because when I have a question my teacher always explains it and because teachers are very nice,” and "Learning Chinese is important because it is always good to know more than one language because you can communicate with more people."

Gianna: "I like going to CLSC because we go to [art and] culture class and we paint. We also play games in Chinese," and, "Learning Chinese is important because you can translate to people, you can order food, ask questions and know your hotel number and what people are saying."


Expanding programs
According to CLSC’s President, Susan Serven, “We have focused considerable energy and resources on building the quality of our faculty and curriculum during the past nine years since our founding in 2002. The results of this strategy are evidenced by program expansion into various public and private schools, our conducting before and after school programs at more than 20 schools and organizations, the expansion of our private tutoring and small group private classes, our corporate program, and our new online learning programs.
Our school consists of families who have no Chinese background, but who want to allow their children the opportunity to learn Chinese and about Chinese culture; adoptive families, who want to have their children maintain language and cultural ties; Chinese-American families who may not speak Chinese at home, but encourage their children to learn, and many families who do speak some Chinese at home, but who want a more interactive, age-appropriate, engaging learning experience for their children.
“We are currently entering our 10th year, and we look forward to continuing to focus on providing students with a high quality educational product that strives to make learning Mandarin and experiencing Chinese culture fun by incorporating traditional language training techniques with interactive supplements, games and other activity based exercises.”
We’re very pleased that our school now consists of about 35% of families from the Westchester area, as well as 60% from Fairfield County.
Why study Chinese at an early age?

Principal Daisy Chen Laoneg explained, “Our approach is unique because we stress interactive usage over rote memorization. Lessons are organized around themes such as family, food and travel so that children can quickly gain useful communication skills. More than 50% of class time is devoted to conversation and activity-based learning to give children ample opportunity to practice communicating in Chinese. We’ve done considerable research to determine which learning methods and interactive, online support materials work best for American students learning Chinese as a second language, and it seems to be working; many parents say their children love doing their Chinese homework!”

Ms. Laone continued, “Generally, younger children acquire a second language better than older children. Early introduction to Chinese exposes each child to a wider variety of its contexts. These contexts foster language proficiency and help develop insights into the nature of the language. With time, each child will gain a deeper understanding and better command of the Chinese language. He / she will ultimately develop a life long interest of Chinese language and culture.

For information on the Chinese Language School of Connecticut’s weekday and weekend language programs, including their Before and After School programs, special workshops. lectures, events, private tutoring and their corporate language program, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.


(END)

Study of Mandarin Chinese by U.S. Students Booming

From: April 5, 2011 Education Week at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/03/study_of_foreign_language_cree.html
Study of Mandarin Chinese By U.S. Students Booming
By Erik Robelen on March 29, 2011 12:12 PM | Leave a comment | Recommend
Chinese is in. Latin and French, it seems, are out. And Spanish is still, well, el jefe. (Translation: the boss or chief.) That's my quick-and-dirty takeaway from new data on the study of foreign languages by U.S. students.

In another sign of China's growing prominence on the world stage, the number of U.S. students learning Mandarin Chinese has tripled in recent years, according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. But the roughly 60,000 young people studying it as of the 2007-08 academic year was dwarfed by the millions learning Spanish, by far the most popular language.

Overall, the data released today show that enrollment in foreign-language courses and programs has increased slightly. That may sound like good news, but as officials at the council are quick to note, it's nothing to celebrate, as fewer than one-in-five American students at the K-12 level are enrolled in foreign-language education. That's right, only 18.5 percent in 2007-08, or 8.9 million students, up from 18 percent in 2004-05.

"We're still woefully behind almost all other countries of the world, particularly industrialized countries," Marty Abbott, the education director at ACTFL, told me in an interview. "When you look at all the countries that surpass us on the PISA tests, they all have early-language programs, they start children learning language in elementary schools."

She added: "In Europe, the whole effort is to learn another language besides your language to a near-native level, and a third or fourth at what they call a 'functional proficiency level,' " she said.

Abbott did note that the data are more favorable when looking at the middle and high school levels, where most U.S. students study foreign languages. In grades 7-12, 32 percent were taking a foreign language. But that still suggests that most students will graduate from high school without ever having studied a foreign language.

As for Mandarin, Abbott said she's not surprised to see more students studying it, noting that this is consistent with previous trends when the rise in a nation's prominence led to more U.S. students studying the language. In the 1960s, she said, there was a big rise in the study of Russian, and Japanese in the 1980s. (I wrote last fall about the growing role of the Chinese government itself in promoting Mandarin-language instruction in the United States.)

I also spoke with Bret Lovejoy, the executive director of the ACTFL. He said the question is whether Mandarin will remain popular.

"The problem I see is that, and this can be with any language that seems to grab the attention of a lot of people, is how well is it going to be sustained over time," he told me. "And too often, what we see is that a new language program is installed in a school system or a school, and that one that's there and that may be very successful is eliminated."

Here's a snapshot of key findings, based on comparing 2004-05 enrollment with 2007-08. The languages that saw an increase include:

• Mandarin, up 195 percent to 60,000;
• Japanese, up 18 percent to 73,000;
• German, up 8 percent to 395,000;
• Russian, up 3 percent to 12,000; and
• Spanish, up 2 percent, to 6.42 million.

Meanwhile:

• French is down 3 percent to 1.25 million; and
• Latin is down 9 percent to 205,000.

There are plenty more data to mine in this report, so you should check it out.

One other thing. President Barack Obama just yesterday promoted the learning of foreign languages in a speech at a District of Columbia public school.

"For all the young people here, I want you guys to be studying hard because it is critical for all American students to have language skills. And I want everybody here to be working hard to make sure that you don't just speak one language, you speak a bunch of languages."

Lovejoy said he was pleased by the plug for learning other languages, but said he's been disappointed by the president when it comes to action.

"He's saying the right things, but we're not really seeing this translate into policy," Lovejoy told me.

He highlighted the fact that President Obama has proposed to consolidate funding for the $27 million Foreign Language Assistance Program at the U.S. Department of Education into a broader, competitive fund focused on promoting a "well-rounded education."

"The only proposal we've seen is to fold the FLAP into the well-rounded child [program]," Lovejoy said, "and I think that will lead to less money for languages."

CNBC Says Chinese Year of the Rabbit is "Lucky"

Burrowing for Wealth in the Year of Rabbit
Published: Sunday, 6 Feb 2011 | 9:54 PM ET Text Size By: Geraldine Tan
CNBC Asia Pacific

Perhaps it's time to whip the bunny out of the hat. After the volatility that marked the year of the Golden Tiger in 2010, the incoming Metal Rabbit may be what's needed bring some calm back to the markets.

The Rabbit is said to be the luckiest sign in Chinese astrology; and according to CLSA's annual Feng Shui Index, the new Lunar Year will bring plenty of luck and material gains for investors.

The report combines the traditional Chinese practice of predicting fortunes through dates — or feng shui — and current market trends to see what 2011 holds for equities, commodities and property.

"The year of the Metal Rabbit provides great opportunity for investors to reap the rewards of astute investing," said the report. "But they should be forewarned: those who chase two rabbits will not catch one."

That means staying focused in whatever you invest in, as market movements will remain choppy this year, though less than what was experienced the year before, the report says.

And the best way to get richer this year, according to CLSA, is to accumulate indirect wealth, in the form of dividends paid from stocks.

In terms of asset classes, metals will do well this year, especially gold, said CLSA. The yellow metal could very well break above $2,000 per ounce; while silver and rare metals like gadolinium will also fare well.


Still, it's looking to be a volatile year for stocks. CLSA says the year will start slow, with rallies expected in the months of July, August, October and November. But investors should brace for market corrections in September and October.

Remember to mark 4 August on your calendar — according to the CLSA's Feng Shui Index, this will be a particularly profitable day.

So which animal signs are expected to profit this year? Those born under the Cow, Sheep, Dog and Pig signs.

But it will be a bumpy ride for Tigers and Roosters.

That said, CLSA maintains that the feng shui predictions are just, well, predictions. Investors will still need to do their homework and apply good judgement in investing.

NY Times: Forbidden City Treasure at the Met

From:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/arts/design/04emperor.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Art%20Review:%20A%20Man%20of%20Contradictions,%20With%20a%20Collection%20to%20Match&st=cse,
where you can see a slideshow of the treasures on exhibition.

February 3, 2011
A Man of Contradictions, With a Collection to MatchBy HOLLAND
COTTER

When China’s last emperor finally left the premises in 1924, the Forbidden
City was renamed the Palace Museum, and a labyrinthine complex of ceremonial
and domestic spaces, off limits to all but a few for centuries, was suddenly
open to the world.

Still, it kept some secrets. Few visitors, for example, knew of the
existence of a self-contained suite of small pavilions and gardens tucked
away at the Forbidden City’s northeast corner, echoing its shape.

They made up the Tranquillity and Longevity Palace, which, in the mid-18th
century, had been remodeled as a potential retirement home by the adamantly
unretiring and design-obsessed Qing dynasty emperor Qianlong.

He lavished attention on the palace — covered its walls with trompe l’oeil
paintings, fitted it out with false doors, see-through partitions, Buddhist
shrines and clocks — to make it a place that reflected his adventurous
tastes, a place where he might want to live. But in the end, he spent little
time there. And the palace, often referred to now as the Qianlong Garden,
had only a handful of imperial tenants after he died in 1799.

For most of the 20th century it stayed empty. The Chinese government had no
cash to spare for its upkeep, and conserving Qing culture was on no one’s
list of priorities. The building exteriors were maintained, but the
interiors, with their frozen-in-time ensembles of furniture, painting,
textiles and luxury objects, were left to fend for themselves.

Things have changed. China, now (and not for the first time) a global power
in need of an agreeable self-image to sell, has seen the wisdom of
preserving its visual heritage — all of it. And international scholars of
that heritage, once separated by distance, are now thoroughly networked. A
concrete result of this new one-worldism is a collaboration, now in
progress, between the Palace Museum and the World Monuments Fund to restore
the Qianlong Garden to its former splendor.

Among the art historians acting as consultants to the project is Nancy
Berliner, the curator of Chinese art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem,
Mass. By 2003, the year the restoration got under way, Ms. Berliner had
already scored a Qing-related coup of her own by overseeing the transfer,
from China to the Salem museum, of an intact house dating to the dynasty.
And last fall she scored a second one with “The Emperor’s Private Paradise:
Treasures From the Forbidden City,” an exhibition she organized for the
Peabody Essex, and which now appears, in a different form, at the Metropolitan
Museum of
Art
.

The show is made up primarily of freshly conserved Qing objects — thrones,
cabinets, screens, religious sculptures, paintings — from the collection of
the Palace Museum, many specifically from Qianlong Garden buildings.
Qianlong himself probably commissioned some of the items. Certainly his
sensibility is written all over them.

Born in Beijing in 1711, Qianlong (pronounced Chee-en lohng) descended from
non-Chinese-speaking northerners who called themselves Manchu and ruled
China as the Qing dynasty from 1644 to 1911. Self-confident and adventurous,
he was a ceaseless mover and doer, constantly making inspection tours of a
country that during his reign was the largest and richest in the world.

Largeness, in fact, was his calling card. His cultural initiatives seem
conceived precisely to generate preposterous statistics. He commissioned and
participated in the creation of an anthology of 2,000 years of Chinese
literature: it appeared in the form of 36,000 handwritten volumes, which he
ordered to be copied several times.

A writer himself, he left more than 40,000 poems behind when he died. When
he was 50, he published a compendium of his calligraphy. He acquired art of
all kinds in record-breaking quantities. At one point he cataloged a
collection of some 10,000 of his paintings, then went on to collect more.

He was a knot of contradictions. He preserved thousand of books in his
anthology, but also destroyed thousands, some of them legendary classics,
that he considered politically subversive. As an art connoisseur, he had an
uncannily sensitive eye, yet he insisted on incising his name into precious
ceramics and writing it repeatedly on priceless paintings, effectively
defacing them.

Although he had many self-portraits made, no cohesive reading of his
personality can be drawn from them. In one painting he is an imposing
Confucian ancestor figure; in another, a humble young Daoist scholar. In a
third piece we find him floating at the center of a Tibetan Buddhist mandala
as the embodiment of the bodhisattva of wisdom, which he believed himself to
be.

As a highly self-aware performer, he exploited the public relations uses of
shape-shifting, offering alternate versions of himself to different
audiences, Manchu, Han Chinese and European.

He was wary of Europe politically, but entranced by vision-tickling aspects
of its art, like vanishing-point perspective and trompe l’oeil realism.
Christianity left him cold — why should he worship a supreme being when he
was one? — but he treasured Jesuit missionary artists like Giuseppe
Castiglione and kept them on his payroll.

Contradiction is also the animating dynamic of the art in the Met show
created to adorn the various buildings — reception halls, studios,
libraries, Buddhist shrines — in the Qianlong Garden.

In the circular portrait of the young Qianlong in scholar robes in the first
gallery, the pictorial space is pancake-flat, depthless. But in a
Western-style mural painting on silk nearby, life-size figures of woman and
child beckon us into a three-dimensional hall. (Several such murals cover
walls in the one Qianlong Garden building that was fully restored in 2008
and can be digitally toured in another Met gallery.)

Realism in Qing art, however, often veers into the surreal, as is evident in
a mesmerizingly bizarre furniture ensemble. Like some version of rustic
Victoriana, all three units — chair, couch bed, foot stool — appear to be
woven from roots and vines, though in this case the interwoven strands look
freakishly alive, writhing and twisting like nests of snakes. Only when you
inspect the furniture closely do you see that this organicism run riot is
strictly an illusion. The roots and vines have been painstakingly puzzled
together from many small pieces of wood, in a design meant to evoke a Daoist
immersion in nature.

This kind of interplay between opposites — the unnatural and the natural,
the grotesque and the spiritual — powers the show. Qianlong went for art and
design that pushed such contrasts to the limit and beyond, short-circuiting
received notions of good taste and bad taste to deliver little shocks of
pleasure.

You can feel such zaps radiating from one work in particular: a 16-panel
wood-and-lacquer screen carrying portraits of early disciples of the Buddha,
known as luohans. These figures are traditionally pretty gross: ragged and
repellent old men, with cartoon faces and hair sprouting from unlikely
places. They’re shown that way here too, but in a medium — white jade inlaid
on black lacquer — that is so ethereal, and worked with such fineness, as to
all but cancel out any impression of ugliness.

The screen holds another surprise too. When conservators moved it from its
original position against a wall, they found that the reverse sides of the
panels were painted with images of trees and flowers in tones of gold.
Stunning!

At the Peabody Essex, the screen was free-standing and could be viewed from
both sides. The Met, by contrast, has placed it in a long wall case, with
the luohans face out, and a few panels flipped to give a sampling of the
painting. And this is just one of the ways in which the Met edition of the
show differs from the Salem original.

Judging from photographs, you can see that the installation Ms. Berliner
devised at the Peabody Essex was spaciously laid out, with an effort made to
simulate the architectural interior in which the objects were once found. At
the Met, the same objects have been squeezed into the narrow Chinese
painting galleries, with almost everything confined to tall cases designed
to hold scrolls.

As if to compensate for a more straightened and prosaic approach, the New
York presentation — organized by Maxwell K. Hearn, curator of Chinese art,
with an ingenious design by Daniel Kershaw — has been enriched with examples
of Qing art from the Met’s collection, including a large Castiglione drawing
and a pair of panoramic scrolls depicting two of Qianlong’s imperial road
trips.

We also get something that in most museums we can only imagine: a real
garden, in the form of the Astor Court. It’s based on a Ming rather than a
Qing prototype, but the components — twisty river rocks set in greenery —
are right. And, because the Met’s display cases are as shallow as they are
tall, we can see everything in them close-up: the cloisonné medallions
adorning a doorway surround, the stitch work in a satin chair cover, the
chips of jade, coral and lapis lazuli embedded in a relief of a blossoming
plum tree that comes across as both garish and sumptuous.

Up close was the emperor’s perspective too: proprietary, absorbed,
evaluative. And — who knows? — it may not be available again, once these
objects return to Beijing and are placed, where they belong, in the
completely restored Qianlong Garden that is scheduled to reopen in 2019, to
what will surely be an avid new public.

*Forbidden-City Treasure*

*WHAT* “The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures From the Forbidden City.”
*WHEN AND WHERE* Through May 1, Metropolitan Museum of
Art;
(212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org
.

恭贺新喜! Xin Nian Kuai Le! Happy Chinese New Year!

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110131/LIFE/101310303/Year-of-the-Rabbit-dawns

There's more to the Chinese Zodiac than a hippety hop into year 4708 for people born under the sign of rabbit.

Rabbit babies are private, introverted and withdrawn. Or quietly charismatic, thoughtful and calm? It's hard to generalize a destiny using a centuries-old system based on natural elements, marked by fixed colors and assigned a dozen animals as they correspond to the hour, date, month and year of birth.

One thing is clear, said Elizabeth VanderVen, an assistant history professor at Rutgers University in Camden, N.J., and a specialist on Chinese and eastern Asian culture.

"Rabbits are considered to be especially lucky financially," she said, noting some believe rabbits are the luckiest of all signs in the Chinese zodiac.

That, VanderVen said, could be especially true this year because the 2011 rabbit year corresponds with the element of metal, symbolizing great wealth.

This we can make easy sense of: Alex Rodriguez is a rabbit. Same for Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, Drew Barrymore, Enrique Iglesias, George Orwell, Frank Sinatra, Albert Einstein and Leon Trotsky.

In Vietnam, the rabbit's not a rabbit at all but a cat, which failed to make the top 12 in China, according to legend.

The rabbit comes fourth in the zodiac's 12-year cycle. Rabbit years include 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987 and 1999 on the more international Gregorian calendar, as opposed to the lunisolar Chinese calendar that pegs 2011 as 4708.

The major holiday in Asia shifts somewhat over January and February. This year it starts Feb. 3 and always lasts for 15 days.

The Chinese calendar not only follows the 12-year cycle but characteristics within the cycle are touched by the influences of fire, earth, metal, water and wood — each with a yin (female) form and a yang (male) form. To make leap year adjustments, the colors of white, black, green, red and brown are also assigned.

This rabbit year is white yin metal, likely making the precious metal of silver prominent, so watch for lots of silver souvenirs.

"The 2011 rabbit will obtain wealth if s/he works hard and diligently," VanderVen predicts.

Her personality list for rabbits: honest, sensitive, tactful, stylish, sophisticated, virtuous and modest, but they're also viewed as snobbish, standoffish, self-righteous, oversensitive and a little unpredictable.

Pardon My French [but] We're Teaching the Wrong Language

From:
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/01/26/pardon-my-french-we%E2%80%99re-teaching-the-wrong-languages/,

Pardon My French: We’re Teaching the Wrong Languages
Chinese school children during lessons at a classroom in China’s Anhui
province (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Of late, it has been considered glum news when a university such as the
State University of New York at Albany eliminates its French major. Yet
there were those who mourned the eclipse of the horse-and-buggy not so long
ago. I highly suspect that this news from SUNY and elsewhere, in conjunction
with reports of universities bulking up instruction in Arabic and Chinese,
is the beginning of a more sensible future in language teaching in the
United States.

In fact, I, despite having earned a B.A. in French myself, have a tripartite
vision for what the language teaching norm in America should be by 2050. It
includes many fewer me’s and many more students prepared for the linguistic
reality of our world as opposed to Woodrow Wilson’s. Ideally, we will also
see not only a revolution in the array of languages most taught, but in how
they are taught as well.

1. *Chinese* *and Arabic first, with Spanish as training wheels*. With China
poised to become the economic behemoth, and our most pressing diplomatic
problems being with people most of whom speak Arabic, an America where
Western European languages are considered central to an education has become
a puzzlement.

There was a time when French, for example, was Europe’s international
language, when for most Westerners, Europe was also effectively shorthand
for “the world.” This has changed: English, for better or for worse, is the
international language for Europe and far beyond. French is the vehicle for
an interesting culture, indeed—but in 2011, upon what grounds does this
culture exert a higher priority upon our acquaintance than any number of
others? To many, the cultures of China and the Middle East would seem to
have a certain primacy for modern Americans, and a Martian observer would be
baffled as to why there would be any question about the matter.

Our embrace of French as a mark of wider horizons is a conditioned reflex,
making about as much sense in our modern moment as throwing rice at a bride.
Why not barley? Or corn flakes? Or blowing on little plastic bassoons?
Whatever the reason, the chances are infinitesimal that we would choose rice
if starting over in ignorance of past tradition. The same goes for French,
German, and Italian. Europe is home to a mere couple of hundred of the
world’s 6,000 languages. Quite a few of the remaining 5,800 are important to
America’s present and future. Chinese and Arabic stand out among them.

This is all the more important because both are structured so much
differently than English—that is, they are “diverse” as we moderns term it.
There are those who question a mission in “identity” departments to
encourage students to study themselves rather than to broaden their horizons
to study the world. Such cavils would apply equally to the Western Europe
fetish in language teaching. French and German belong to the same language
family as English, Indo-European: they are cats to English’s dog.

Chinese is based on a collection of monosyllables that become a vocabulary
through pronouncing the syllables on different tones to indicate meanings:
in Cantonese, depending on the pitch *yau* can mean worry, paint, thin, oil,
again or friend. To acquire Chinese, along with its magnificently baroque
writing system, is to expand the mind into a greater awareness of the
immense variation possible in human expression. It is a different planet. In
comparison, French and German are like a vacation two towns over.

Arabic, meanwhile, has another fabulous writing system as well as a grammar
unlike the “amo, amas, amat” style we are familiar with, in which a skeleton
of three consonants can become a world of related words based on what you
squeeze around them: *katiib* “writer,” *kitaab* “book,” *kataba* “he
wrote,” *maktab* “school.” Again, this is education in its etymological
sense of “being led out of,” as opposed to the shorter trip offered by
European languages. And as for the argument that European languages are
vehicles of massive literatures, let’s face it—when were most of us going to
get around to reading “Madame Bovary” in the original?

Of course, European languages should be available for those interested—as
Arabic and Chinese have been “available” on the sidelines. However, only one
of them should be held front and center: Spanish. For one, its utility to us
is much more immediate than the rice at a wedding, useful to communication
with a massive contingent of Americans. And then, because Spanish, as a
Western European language, is so much easier to pick up for us than Chinese
and Arabic, it can serve as a “gateway” language for younger people. An idea
would be for schools to offer Spanish starting in elementary school as a
linguistic warm-up, with exposure to Chinese and Arabic beginning in middle
school.

2. *Reading** should be secondary to speaking. *One of the pitfalls in the
teaching of languages with non-Roman writing systems is that so much time is
spent from the outset on teaching the script that the students do not learn
how to actually say much. Yet he who offers a conversational repertoire
consisting largely of naming objects, exclaiming set expressions like *Good
morning*, and reciting sentiments such as *My uncle is a lawyer but my aunt
has a spoon* is at a distinct social disadvantage.

Yet too often this is most of what students of Chinese, Arabic, Japanese and
the like are capable of after even a whole school year of study, because so
much time is spent drilling the writing system. It’s also easy for students
to get weary or discouraged when this is most of the yield after so long.

Certainly one should be able to read in a language one has
learned—eventually. However, the idea that reading must happen at the outset
of one’s acquaintance with a new language is based on a mistaken impression,
understandable but pernicious, that writing “is” language on a certain
level. To be a literate modern person is to think of a language as its
written version, with speaking as a casual reflection of it. However, only
about 200 of the world’s 6,000 languages are written ones, and writing has
only existed for less than 6,000 years. Fundamentally, language is speech
and always has been. Speech is not a messy reflection of language; writing
is a studied and inaccurate refraction of speech.

We intuitively understand the primacy of speech when it comes to our native
language. We do not discourage an infant from speaking until he or she
masters writing. Note also a cognitive disjunction one encounters with
foreigners or children of immigrants who speak a language like Tamil
fluently and yet sheepishly mention that they can’t write it. In such cases
we do not think, “Then you don’t really know the language, do you?” as they
converse in it on the phone.

This means, however, that in my ideal language-teaching scenario, languages
like Chinese and Arabic should be taught first in Romanized transliteration.
The writing system should be introduced gradually, with no sense of it being
the primary object of study. This will mean, it should be clear, that the
student of Arabic will only very gradually be able to decode Arabic writing
– but will much more quickly be able to have modestly contentful
conversations, which will only heighten students’ motivation to learn the
writing system (it’s no more fun to read about uncles and spoons than to
talk about them, after all).

3. *Revise the conception of what idioms are*. To get as far beyond those
uncles and spoons as quickly as possible, in my 2050 utopia there will have
been a complete revision of what are considered idioms in language teaching.
Too often, we come away from years of studying a language unable to express
things as utterly everyday in a human experience as “It’s the wrong kind
anyway.” Instead, one is able to refer eagerly to cousins, bathing suits,
silverware and other things often rarely engaged at length in conversation.

Much of the reason is a sense that a language consists of 1) the basic
meanings of individual words and 2) grammar such as tables of endings, with
all else as idioms one is expected to pick up, if one ever does, upon living
in the language. However, linguists are increasingly aware that the brain
processes idioms like words. For example, “up a storm” in “He talked up a
storm” is retained as a “word” alongside words you could substitute in the
sentence like “copiously,” or other constructions like “a lot” or “at
length.” To the extent that expressing a concept is fundamental to being
human, then “idiom” or not, it is as vital to language teaching as the word
for “Tuesday.”

A certain few idioms have a classic status and are taught early, such as
French’s “*Je m’appelle,*” (“I call myself”) for “My name is,” a usage of
“call” that, from an English perspective, is non-basic. Yet what makes “My
name is” more important than “pretend,” which in French is “*faire semblant*”
(“make seeming-as”)? This is an “idiom” much more central to speaking a
language than venturing insights about your aunt or even counting past 30.

Namely, in my experience grappling with languages, I find six basic concepts
key to not rolling into the linguistic gutter at every second attempt to say
what you are actually thinking. Key ways of expressing these concepts should
be imparted long before most irregular verbs or how to say “socks.” They
amount to an acronym, DEPICT. To speak is to be able to: Disapprove beyond
just not liking (“the wrong hat,” “it doesn’t fit,” “it’s supposed to be…”);
Experience beyond mere liking (“looks,” “sounds,” “smells,” “tastes,” “feels
like,” “you can tell”); Precisify (“all the way up to,” “that much,” “right
into”); render the Inexact (“and things like that,” “about four of them,”
“not necessarily”); convey Counterexpectation (“even without a shirt,” “do
it anyway”); and Transform (“make it nicer,” “pretend”).

These things are generally no more difficult to acquire than basic words, as
witnessed by how quickly students take to German’s “*Wie geht’s”* and
French’s “*il y a”* for “there is.” In the language teaching of the future,
concepts in the DEPICT class must be taught as urgently as words and grammar
if students are to actually learn to use the languages they are taught.

In the future, then, language teaching should expand minds further than we
are accustomed to, unshackled from linguistic assumptions which can only be
termed prejudices: that the languages most like ours are central to
enlightenment, that there is no meaningful progress in learning a language
without being able to read it, and that beyond words and tables is an outer
ring of idioms rather than the very heart of speaking. Surely, this expanded
sense of language study would bring us closer to the heart of the liberal
arts mission than expounding in French about what color our niece’s forks
are.

*John McWhorter is the William Simon Fellow at Columbia University and a
contributing editor to the New Republic.*

Chinese Language School of Connecticut's Annual Chinese New Year Festival

CLSC's 9th Annual Chinese New Year Festival made the front pages of all area papers for the 9th year in a row...huge thanks to Anita Lai, Dana Lupton, Terri Kung, Samantha Connell and the intrepid Chinese New Year Volunteer Committee for their stupendous efforts again this year!

From www.greenwichcitizen.com.

Photo: Julie Ruth / Greenwich Citizen

Greenwich resident Emanuel Lai, 8, gets to stay up really late one night each year: Chinese New Year's Eve. How late? "Till he passes out," said his mother Anita Lai, laughing. "Traditionally you let children stay up late that night because it's a way children wish longevity for their parents."

The Chinese New Year, also called Asian New Year, will be celebrated in Greenwich, as it is around the world, with plenty of ancient customs and family-centered dinners of dumplings and noodles, fish and other traditional dishes.

Cynthia Chang, a Greenwich resident who is Chinese but grew up in Taiwan, said the Chinese New Year celebrates multi-generational families and is a time when people pay respect to their elders and ancestors.

In China, people will pick up and travel for the Chinese New Year to the graves of their ancestors to pay their respects and thank them for what they have done for the current generations, said Chang.

It is also time to start fresh, and Chinese families in town will observe many customs that represent a new beginning. "For the New Year, you don't want your old clothes with you; you want new clothes," Lai explained. "We'll first clean the house in the morning to sweep out old spirits, and, when we're ready, we'll dress ourselves in new clothes. If you wear something red, that's even better, because it means very good luck in Chinese culture."

Though the Chinese New Year falls on Feb. 3 this year, the celebration officially began last Sunday for more than 30 Greenwich families with a festival in Stamford sponsored by the Greenwich-based Chinese Language School of Connecticut (CLSC), a non-profit school that teaches Mandarin Chinese as a second language along with lessons about Chinese culture.

The festival, which doubles as a fundraiser for CLCS, also drew children and parents around Westchester and Fairfield County. Some are Chinese and want their children to learn or retain the language and culture. Others have adopted children and want them to stay connected with their Chinese heritage, and still others simply want their children to learn about Chinese culture.

The Chinese Language School of Connecticut is relatively new; it has only offered the festival since the school opened in 2002, when parent Susan Serven and other area parents co-founded the school. But it has fast become the center of a vibrant and diverse community in Greenwich that wants its children to know and appreciate Chinese culture and language.

Greenwich resident Mary Murphy, who spent much of her childhood in Thailand, already had strong ties to Asian culture before she and her husband adopted daughter Robin, 5, from Southeast Asia. She enrolled her in the school because she feels it is very important for Robin to learn Mandarin. "It's her biological heritage and it will also be a huge advantage for her to speak Mandarin. It's a beautiful language," Murphy said.

English-born Anita Lai, who chaired the festival, felt it was important to teach her son, whose father is Chinese, about Asian culture, so he studies Mandarin and Chinese culture on Sundays year-round. "I didn't want Emanuel to lose that beautiful culture and those rich traditions: the art, singing styles, the instruments, the calligraphy, the beautiful characters, the traditions for everything," Lai said.

CLSC's New Year celebration this year featured the ancient Chinese dragon and lion dances, a musical performance by the Chinese Musical Ensemble, a martial arts demonstration, Chinese arts and crafts along with traditional Chinese New Year dishes, such as long noodles -- which are eaten uncut -- to symbolize a long life. "Almost every dish has a symbolic meaning or name that sounds like a Chinese character for fortune, happiness longevity and prosperity," explained Lai. "There're very traditional foods, like dumplings, which promise wealth and prosperity, fish prepared whole, special vegetables, jello with fruit, Hong Kong-style egg tarts -- you could go on and on about what they stand for."

For months CLCS children prepared to perform the Chinese dragon dance, a highlight of the festivities. The dragon, an emblem of the Chinese emperors, appears on Chinese New Year to wish everyone peace, prosperity and good luck. Another highlight came when several performers in a large multi-colored lion costume pranced around to the sound of drums, to ward off evil spirits. According to tradition, children, many in Mandarin garb, fed the lion red envelopes with money. "The lion's coming and he's hungry. He's getting rid of all of bad stuff that happened and bringing in the new year, and you give him the traditional red envelopes to thank him for doing his job," Lai explained.

Last week the Second Congregational Church also held a Chinese New Year celebration, which 100 peoople attended. The church also houses classrooms for the CLSC in its preschool building. "It's great; we get to teach the pre-schoolers about Chinese culture," said Chang.

Though the New Year will be a family-centered celebration, it will be observed differently by Greenwich residents. "We like to go down into Chinatown in the city and really get an authentic Chinese meal," Murphy said. "It's a lot of fun; you have banquet-style eating, with the family all sitting in a circle."

Lai will be cooking for family in her home, while Chang will follow a tradition that her family began in Taiwan. "We always have a group of family and close friends with us. We'll select a restaurant on the West side in Manhattan and have a big new year's dinner," she said.

After family dinner celebrations, the elders in the family traditionally give the children good luck money: red envelopes with crisp dollar bills. The amount in the envelope? It varies by family, but one thing, Chang says, is for sure: the amount will not contain a four, which is bad luck. Best to slip an amount in that has an eight in the total: it's the Chinese lucky number.

NOTE: The Chinese Language School of Connecticut will hold an open house for interested families on Sunday, April 17. Registration opens on Sunday, May 1.

For more details, visit www.chineselanguageschool.org. You can also contact the school by phone at 866-301-4906 or email: info@chineselanguageschool.org.

CLSC holds classes on Sundays at Eastern Middle School, 51 Hendrie Avenue, in Riverside, and on weekdays at the Second Congregational Church, Room 19, 139 E. Putnam Ave,, Greenwich, CT 06830.


Photo: Julie Ruth / Greenwich Citizen

Senator Blumenthal Welcomes in the Chinese Year of the Rabbit

Senator Richard Blumenthal and Stamford Mayor Pavia Welcome All to the Chinese Language School of Connecticut’s 9th Annual Chinese New Year Festival

-- 9th Annual Chinese New Year Festival Rings in the Year of the Rabbit --


Riverside, CT, January 25, 2011 – Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia and Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal opened the ceremony celebrating the Chinese Year of the Rabbit at the Chinese Language School of Connecticut’s 9th Annual Chinese New Year Festival, held Sunday, January 23, 2011, from 12-3pm, at the Stamford Plaza Hotel and Conference Center.

Old Greenwich resident, and CLSC Chinese New Year Chair Anita Lai noted, “CLSC's Chinese New Year Festival is a wonderful way to celebrate the New Year traditions with your family. It’s a wonderful way to explore Chinese culture and traditions with your children.”

CLSC co-founder and organization president, New Canaan resident Susan Serven, said, “Especially in light of President Hu’s recent visit to Washington, and with China’s growing economic expansion, it’s critical that we build bridges between cultures, and allow our children to learn important second languages such as Chinese. This will allow our children to compete successfully in an international marketplace, and can enable them to become global citizens.”

Nearly 300 guests and attendees attended the Festival, which welcomed guests at the entrance with music provided by the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, and which offered traditional food, and entertainment such as a Dragon Dance performed by CLSC students, a Lion Dance and Martial Arts demonstration by Kwan’s Kung Fu of Peekskill, NY, children’s name painting, Chinese calligraphy, and crafts, face painting, Chinese vendors, an exhibit of CLSC student’s art, and a special performance and workshop by the Columbia Chinese YoYo Troupe. Dessert was a custom-made, 3-tiered Chinese Year of the Rabbit cake created by Stamford’s Samantha Connell.

The non-profit, fully accredited Chinese Language School of Connecticut (CLSC) (www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org) teaches Mandarin Chinese as a second language to children and adults in their weekday and weekend classes, Before and After School programs, cultural workshops, winter and spring break programs, summer classes, private tutoring and AP Prep sessions. CLSC is the only fully-accredited supplemental Chinese language program in the U.S. which uses U.S. teaching methods in order to engage children in learning Chinese.


* * *

Celebrating Chinese Language and Culture at the Ferguson Library in Stamford

From: http://stamford.patch.com/articles/stamford-families-celebrate-the-year-of-the-rabbit

The Chinese Language School of Connecticut and the Chinese Language School of Fairfield County held a Chinese New Year Celebration Sunday at Ferguson Library.

As the program began, Daisy Laone, principal of the Chinese Language School of Connecticut moved around the room at lightning speed, engaging the children in conversation about the celebration.

“What year is it?” Laone asked.

“2011,” a few of the adults in the room replied.

“The year of the rabbit,” Fiona Bischoff said.

Fiona Bischoff and her twin sister, Caoilainn Bischoff, attended the Chinese Language School of Connecticut in the past and frequently attend programs at the library.

“When you greet people at the Chinese New Year, you say ‘gong xi gong xi — best wishes,” Laone instructed the crowd.

The children quickly repeated after Laone — she then went around the room and helped them each to identify and pronounce their Chinese zodiac sign.

“This is the second year we’ve held this event,” Laone told Patch. “It’s a good chance for children in America to experience the celebration.”

“I hope today that the residents of Stamford can embrace Chinese culture and learn something new,” Yelena Klompus, world languages librarian at Ferguson, told Patch. “Our goal is to make everyone aware of other cultures.”

Klompus chairs the Diversity Task Force at Ferguson Library and is responsible for many of the cultural programs seen throughout the year.

Later in the day, the Chinese Language School of Fairfield County presented a martial arts demonstration and a dance performance.

Dance instructor Erica Hsu’s young students demonstrated a Taiwan aboriginal dance. Their costumes were made by parents and teachers at the school. Martial arts instructor Anastasia Lebrun led four students through a series of moves. Lebrun has been working with her students on and off since September.

“We are a very serious school,” Yulin Tsao, principal of the Chinese Language School of Fairfield County told the crowd. “But when we have fun, we have fun.”

The Chinese Language School of Connecticut will host their ninth annual fundraiser, a Chinese New Year Festival, on Jan. 23 at the Stamford Plaza Hotel and Conference Center. Visit their website for more information.

American Students Learn Their ABCs and Chinese

From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/19/eveningnews/main7263167.shtml

American Students Learn Their ABC's and Chinese
Only 9% of Americans Speak a Foreign Language - Compared to 44 Percent of Europeans

(CBS) China's president said Wednesday young people are the future of the relationship between his country and the U.S. The problem is, he said it in Mandarin - a language most Americans don't understand.

CBS News correspondent Terry McCarthy reports there are some American children who don't have to wait for the translation.

Americans generally assume everyone speaks English. Often, they exceed our expectations. Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin surprised Mike Wallace in 2000 by reciting the Gettysburg Address in English.

Even the French President speaks English - kind of.

But Americans do not generally share such multilingual talents. Only nine percent of Americans speak a foreign language, compared to 44 percent of Europeans - something President Obama is painfully aware of.

"We need to learn foreign languages," Mr. Obama said at a campaign rally in 2008. "I don't speak a foreign language - it's embarrassing."

Instead of struggling with foreign grammar, Americans would rather struggle with headphones to hear the translation.

But not in City Terrace public school in east Los Angeles - where 90 students have been learning Chinese since kindergarten. Like his classmates, third-grader Nelson Enriquez even has his own Chinese name.

"At five years old they are like little sponges," Principal Elaine Fujiu said.

Nelson's family speaks Spanish at home, so he is trilingual - which the
8-year-old is already planning to exploit. "I might get a better job - and a raise too."

The students have been learning Chinese for four years and they are pretty good - but it's an unusual school. Across the country only 50,000 Americans are learning Chinese. In China, by contrast, there are 200 million students learning English.

The numbers are increasing. A decade ago about 300 schools in the U.S. taught Chinese. Now it's close to 1,600 - driven by interest in China's $6 trillion economy, now the second biggest in the world.

At City Terrace the Chinese immersion program is so popular they have a waiting list.

"Learning Chinese as a second language will help their children to get a better job later on," said third-grade teacher Theresa Kao.

Two languages, two cultures - and no one at a loss for words.

Help Us Usher In the Year of the Rabbit!

photo caption: Kwan's Kung Fu performs a traditional lion dance to celebrate the Chinese New Year.


Chinese New Year Festival at Stamford’s Plaza Hotel and Conference Center

-- 9th Annual Chinese New Year Festival Welcomes in the Year of the Rabbit --

“We are very excited to have such an exciting group of performers, artists, and wonderful food at our Chinese New Year Festival this year,” said Greenwich resident, CLSC Chinese New Year Festival Chair, Anita Lai.


Riverside, CT, December 12, 2010 – Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia will welcome in the Year of the Rabbit at the Chinese Language School of Connecticut’s 9th Annual Chinese New Year Festival to be held Sunday, January 23, 2011, from 12:0-3:00pm at the Stamford Plaza Hotel and Conference Center, 2701 Summer Street, Stamford, CT . For information and tickets please visit: www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.

The non-profit Chinese Language School of Connecticut (CLSC) (www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org) teaches Chinese as a second language to children and adults in their weekday and weekend classes, Before and After School programs, cultural workshops, winter and spring break programs, summer classes, private tutoring and AP Prep sessions.

Martial Arts performers, drummers, and a Dragon Dance will be performed by Kwan’s Kung Fu Studio, of Peekskill, NY. Since 1982, martial arts have been taught at Kwan's Kung Fu in Westchester, NY by Sifu Shue Yiu Kwan. This traditional Kwoon (school) offers its students training in Fu Jow Pai (Tiger Claw System), which originated in the mid 19th century, as well as Tai Chi Chuan and Lion Dance. Fu Jow Pai training includes aerobic activity, strength training, increased flexibility, practical self defense, respect, self discipline, values, improved coordination and concentration. Master Kwan has been featured in prominent martial arts publications such as Inside Kung-Fu magazine.

This year’s Chinese New Year Festival will usher in the year of the rabbit and, along with Kwan’s Kung Fu performers, will feature music provided by the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, gravity-defying Chinese Yo-yo performances and children’s workshops by the Columbia University Chinese yoyo troupe, name painting artists, brush calligraphy demonstration, traditional crafts for children; Asian vendors, an authentic Chinese buffet luncheon included as part of the price of admission, and much more.

Susan Serven, president of CLSC, noted, “We’re very pleased to welcome the retirement planning advisory and investment firm, www.YourOwnRetirement.com, as a lead corporate sponsor of this year’s Chinese New Year Festival. Their donation helps fund our event, and allows us to introduce Mandarin Chinese to even more children in the area.” For more information on how to plan your retirement using annuities please visit www.YourOwnRetirement.com.

For information on the Chinese Language School of Connecticut’s language and cultural programs for children and adults, their Before– and After- School programs, special workshops, private tutoring, AP Prep, or corporate language programs, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or email them at info@ChineseLanguageSchool.org.

* * *

Top Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators

How can U.S. students compete globally? They can start by learning Chinese....

from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?_r=2

Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
By SAM DILLON
Published: December 7, 2010

With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science, according to the results of a respected exam.


American officials and Europeans involved in administering the test in about 65 countries acknowledged that the scores from Shanghai — an industrial powerhouse with some 20 million residents and scores of modern universities that is a magnet for the best students in the country — are by no means representative of all of China.

About 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai were chosen as a representative cross-section of students in that city. In the United States, a similar number of students from across the country were selected as a representative sample for the test.

Experts noted the obvious difficulty of using a standardized test to compare countries and cities of vastly different sizes. Even so, they said the stellar academic performance of students in Shanghai was noteworthy, and another sign of China’s rapid modernization.

The results also appeared to reflect the culture of education there, including greater emphasis on teacher training and more time spent on studying rather than extracurricular activities like sports.

“Wow, I’m kind of stunned, I’m thinking Sputnik,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., who served in President Ronald Reagan’s Department of Education, referring to the groundbreaking Soviet satellite launching. Mr. Finn, who has visited schools all across China, said, “I’ve seen how relentless the Chinese are at accomplishing goals, and if they can do this in Shanghai in 2009, they can do it in 10 cities in 2019, and in 50 cities by 2029.”

The test, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, was given to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that includes the world’s major industrial powers.

The results are to be released officially on Tuesday, but advance copies were provided to the news media a day early.

“We have to see this as a wake-up call,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview on Monday.

“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added. “The United States came in 23rd or 24th in most subjects. We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”

In math, the Shanghai students performed in a class by themselves, outperforming second-place Singapore, which has been seen as an educational superstar in recent years. The average math scores of American students put them below 30 other countries.

PISA scores are on a scale, with 500 as the average. Two-thirds of students in participating countries score between 400 and 600. On the math test last year, students in Shanghai scored 600, in Singapore 562, in Germany 513, and in the United States 487.

In reading, Shanghai students scored 556, ahead of second-place Korea with 539. The United States scored 500 and came in 17th, putting it on par with students in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and several other countries.

In science, Shanghai students scored 575. In second place was Finland, where the average score was 554. The United States scored 502 — in 23rd place — with a performance indistinguishable from Poland, Ireland, Norway, France and several other countries.

The testing in Shanghai was carried out by an international contractor, working with Chinese authorities, and overseen by the Australian Council for Educational Research, a nonprofit testing group, said Andreas Schleicher, who directs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s international educational testing program.

Mark Schneider, a commissioner of the Department of Education’s research arm in the George W. Bush administration, who returned from an educational research visit to China on Friday, said he had been skeptical about some PISA results in the past. But Mr. Schneider said he considered the accuracy of these results to be unassailable.

“The technical side of this was well regulated, the sampling was O.K., and there was no evidence of cheating,” he said.

Mr. Schneider, however, noted some factors that may have influenced the outcome.

For one thing, Shanghai is a huge migration hub within China. Students are supposed to return to their home provinces to attend high school, but the Shanghai authorities could increase scores by allowing stellar students to stay in the city, he said. And Shanghai students apparently were told the test was important for China’s image and thus were more motivated to do well, he said.

“Can you imagine the reaction if we told the students of Chicago that the PISA was an important international test and that America’s reputation depended on them performing well?” Mr. Schneider said. “That said, China is taking education very seriously. The work ethic is amazingly strong.”

In a speech to a college audience in North Carolina, President Obama recalled how the Soviet Union’s 1957 launching of Sputnik provoked the United States to increase investment in math and science education, helping America win the space race.

“Fifty years later, our generation’s Sputnik moment is back,” Mr. Obama said. With billions of people in India and China “suddenly plugged into the world economy,” he said, nations with the most educated workers will prevail. “As it stands right now,” he said, “America is in danger of falling behind.”

If Shanghai is a showcase of Chinese educational progress, America’s showcase would be Massachusetts, which has routinely scored higher than all other states on America’s main federal math test in recent years.

But in a 2007 study that correlated the results of that test with the results of an international math exam, Massachusetts students scored behind Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Shanghai did not participate in the test.

A 259-page Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report on the latest Pisa results notes that throughout its history, China has been organized around competitive examinations. “Schools work their students long hours every day, and the work weeks extend into the weekends,” it said.

Chinese students spend less time than American students on athletics, music and other activities not geared toward success on exams in core subjects. Also, in recent years, teaching has rapidly climbed up the ladder of preferred occupations in China, and salaries have risen. In Shanghai, the authorities have undertaken important curricular reforms, and educators have been given more freedom to experiment.

Ever since his organization received the Shanghai test scores last year, Mr. Schleicher said, international testing experts have investigated them to vouch for their accuracy, expecting that they would produce astonishment in many Western countries.

“This is the first time that we have internationally comparable data on learning outcomes in China,” Mr. Schleicher said. “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”

“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” he said

From CNN: Education survey shows eight of top 10 performing countries are in Asia-Pacific region

From: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/07/school.results.us.asia.desai/index.html

You can also watch a video about this at http://asiasociety.org/video/education-learning/asia-top-class and also a video called Why Languages Matter at http://asiasociety.org/video/education-learning/why-language-matters


The U.S. must start learning from Asia
By Vishakha N. Desai, Special to CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Education survey shows eight of top 10 performing countries are in Asia-Pacific region

Studies show higher test scores in math and science are associated with higher growth

High quality teachers and emphasis on math and science are factors, Desai says

Desai: Asia can look to America for clues in cultivating innovation and creativity
Vishakha N. Desai is president of Asia Society, which promotes the teaching of Chinese language and international studies in U.S. schools.

(CNN) -- Results of a global education survey today show U.S. high school students come in a dispiriting 26th out of 65 places worldwide in combined scores for math, science and reading tests.

The OECD's Program for International Assessment (PISA) suggests that while America lags, Asia soars: Out of the top 10, eight are in the Asia-Pacific region -- led by Shanghai and Hong Kong in China, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

The rise of education in Asia is no accident. It reflects deliberate policies and long-term investments that recognize the centrality of quality education to a nation's economic growth.

Studies on PISA data show that higher test scores in math and science are associated with higher growth rates that, in turn, lead to higher incomes. These countries understand, as former Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong has said: "A nation's wealth in the 21st century will depend on the capacity of its people to learn."

What do Asian school systems do to produce such achievement?

There is no one "Asian way" to academic success, just as not all Asian nations are equally successful. Shanghai is the leading edge in China but disparities remain within the country.

There are, however, common themes that permeate high-performing Asian school systems. These include:

• Rigorous standards and coherent curricula. Asian nations establish high academic standards and a demanding school curriculum that clearly defines the content to be taught and is sequenced to build on a student's abilities step by step. Teachers are expected to teach the full curriculum to all students, and schools have substantial responsibility and autonomy to design a program of instruction that meets students' needs.

• High-quality teachers and principals. Teachers are routinely recruited from among the top high-school graduates and, unlike in the U.S., principals generally do not apply to become school leaders as much as they are selected and prepared to do so. There are comprehensive systems for selecting, training, compensating and developing teachers and principals -- delivering tremendous skill right to the classroom.

• Emphasis on math and science. Math and science training begins early in primary school and rigorous courses such as biology, chemistry and physics, as well as algebra and geometry are part of a core curriculum for secondary school. Specialist teachers are often employed in elementary schools unlike "generalists" usually found in U.S. schools.

• Time and Effort. With longer school years and sometimes longer school days, Asian students often have the equivalent of several more years of schooling by the time they finish high school than the typical American student. Asian students are also expected to work hard in school, reflecting a societal belief that developing one's skills and knowledge reflects effort more than innate ability.

Aligning education goals to economic development, Asian nations have built strong school systems by scouring the world -- including the United States -- for effective practices and weaving them together in ways that mesh with their cultural values.

Recognizing the fast pace of change in the world's economic and civic environment, their focus now is on developing teachers, principals and students who are expected to have a global outlook and be "future ready."

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said: "The simple truth is that America has a great deal to learn from the educational practices of other countries."

Models of best practice exist all over the world, but are most noticeably increasing in Asia. And, it's not a one-way street. Asian nations struggle with outmoded instructional practices and an over-reliance on high-pressure examinations -- and they continue to look to America for clues in cultivating innovation in teaching and creativity in their students.

The time has come for America to learn from -- and with -- Asia and the world.

Our ability to compete and lead in a global economy may well depend on it.

Newsweek: America's Chinese Problem

From: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/not-much-progress-in-america-s-chinese-problem.html

America’s Chinese Problem
The reports of progress are wrong.
by Jerry GuoDecember 06, 2010
Corbis
Cutting-edge programs like those at the immersion charter school Yu Ying in Washington, D.C., and reports of Chinese-language courses popping up in heartland America would all seem to suggest that Americans are on the fast track to learning Chinese—and ultimately understanding China. Indeed, it’s a thesis that just feels right. After all, with the recent economic crisis, Americans must appreciate better than anyone else our frightening loss of a competitive edge to the Chinese. You’ll be hard-pressed, the reasoning goes, to find anyone who doesn’t think grasping the language of the world’s fastest-growing economy is a good idea.

But the sad fact is that Americans are not learning Mandarin, the main tongue spoken in mainland China, in droves. Just take a look at the numbers. According to the Center for Applied Linguistics, in 2008 only 4 percent of middle and high schools that offer foreign-language instruction included Mandarin. That’s up from 1 percent in 1997. While that initially seems like respectable growth, the same survey reveals that 13 percent of schools still offer Latin and a full 10-fold more schools offer French than Mandarin. How is it that one a dead language and the other a language primarily used to impress your dinner companion can trounce one spoken by 1.3 billion natives and many millions more expats and immigrants abroad?

The answer is America’s lack of support for language instruction in the classroom. The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act placed all the emphasis on math and reading, to the detriment of foreign language. The result has been cutbacks in courses, particularly to historically popular languages like French, German, and Russian. This lack of funding is especially worrying with regard to Mandarin instruction, which requires teachers and course material that are more expensive and difficult to acquire than those for, say, Spanish. The Chinese government has tried to kick-start instruction in the U.S., sending some 300 Chinese teachers to American classrooms in the last four years, to the tune of $13,000 per teacher. Convincing parents is another thing. According to a report this September by Wakefield Research, twice as many parents believe their kids should speak Spanish than Chinese.

The comparison between Spanish and Chinese is worth fleshing out, because I suspect both parents and students find the former much less daunting than the latter. Who wouldn’t be put off by all those mind-numbing characters and fast pace of speech? But counterintuitively, Mandarin is easier than Spanish in many ways: there is no need to conjugate verbs, match gender or number, nor worry about tenses. What is much tougher, however, is the sheer number of characters you have to memorize and the mastery of tones (depending on the inflection, the word ji could mean chicken or to remember). Since memorization, particularly when it comes to language acquisition, is a skill that gradually diminishes with age, it’s all the more important for kids to pick up Mandarin from a young age.

Yet there is no culture of teaching language to primary-school students in the U.S., at least outside progressive private schools on the coasts. While students in Europe are learning a second, third, or even fourth language in elementary school, our own are still laboring over cursive. Only 15 percent of elementary schools and 58 percent of middle schools offer any foreign languages, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics. It’s time to come to terms with globalization.

The need to train a culturally savvy workforce is something other countries understand much better. The Chinese government estimates that some 40 million foreigners are studying Mandarin, but according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, only 50,000 of them are in the United States.

Who’s beating us? Asia. The Beijing Language and Culture University Press, which is the biggest publisher of textbooks on learning Chinese in the world, says most of its students are coming from Japan and South Korea, not the U.S. Indonesians are learning Chinese en masse—a 42 percent jump from 2007 to 2009—while this September India’s education minister suggested adding Chinese to the state curriculum. In the U.S., Chinese is the fifth-most-popular language to learn, according to Tom Adams, CEO of the language-instruction company Rosetta Stone. In Japan and South Korea, it’s No. 2. Looks like it’s time to go back to school.

Ascend Pan-Asian Leadership Group Launches Connecticut Chapter

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.