Should My Kid Learn Mandarin Chinese?

· August 17, 2011, 8:00 AM ET

Should My Kid Learn Mandarin Chinese?

Philip P. Pan

Tom Scocca

I started to truly appreciate the power of early childhood Chinese-language education when our son, at the age of two, started speaking English wrong. “The blue of cup,” he would say, meaning his blue cup.

This wasn’t a random preschool linguistic hiccup, we realized. He was trying to use Chinese syntax: “of” was standing in for the Mandarin particle “de” to turn the noun “blue” into an adjective. And his odd habit of indicating things by saying “this one” or “that one”–he was rendering the Chinese “zhege” and “neige” in English. That is, he was speaking Chinglish.

The usual arguments in favor of Mandarin education say that he should be on his way to conquering the world. An extra language, the theory goes, supplies extra brainpower, and Chinese in particular is a skill that will prepare young children to compete in the global 21st-century marketplace of talent.

Fun, right? If building an optimized little academic and economic performer were all there is to it, we’d have pulled him out of bilingual preschool long ago. Luckily, the reality of having a little Chinese learner underfoot is messier and more entertaining than that.

Our son’s head start in Chinese was mostly an accident. He was born in Beijing because my wife and I were living and working there, and he arrived before we could get back to New York for the delivery. So his first influences were Chinese nurses and the sound of Mandopop on the night-shift radio in the newborn unit.

He spent the first year and a half of his life in the Chinese capital, the seat of standard Mandarin. This is a point of pride for him now, at age four, though in fact he mostly was exposed to his second-generation Chinese-American mother’s lax Taiwan accent and the Sichuan countryside accent of our nanny, who amused him by chanting old schoolhouse rhymes about the glory of Mao.

That early input, followed by half-days of Chinese preschool in New York, hasn’t yet produced a junior trans-Pacific CEO. If you’re considering Mandarin as part of a program of intensive child-improvement, it’s worth remembering that children aren’t so easy to improve.

Adding a second language means a child can play dumb in two languages at once. Or play smart: “Daddy can’t speak Chinese,” he says sometimes, when Daddy speaks rudimentary Chinese to him. Then he demands to borrow my smartphone, so he can look up Chinese characters in the dictionary software.

Lately, he refuses to address his Chinese-born grandparents by their usual titles, insisting on “Grandma” and “Grandpa” in English. But he serenades them with Chinese songs from school, with flawless schoolteacher diction and a gusto that would startle his actual teachers if they heard it. And he is more obedient in Mandarin than in English–when an order comes in Chinese, he has learned, his parents are serious about it.

Mostly, though, Mandarin in the hands of a toddler is not a practical tool. Trying to justify it that way is a bit like the efforts to put a dollar value on liberal-arts education. Chinese is, like math or music, a distinct system of representation, another way to think about the world. You may learn a language because you need to, but you stick with it because it is interesting to think about.

In Beijing, as China prepared for the 2008 Olympics, I used to visit an English class for senior citizens. Officially, the purpose was instrumental: to increase the number of English-speaking residents for the benefit of the foreign tourists during the Games. The students’ questions for me, however, were more esoteric: What was the English for an electrified bus? For saying thunderstorms were coming? For “hidden microphone”? When I came back two years after the Olympics, the class was still full.

So like his other bilingual friends, our son is capricious about how and when to use his own abilities. Have I toweled him off enough? “Chabuduo,” I say, meaning “close enough.” “Chabuduo!” he says, and keeps saying it off and on for days. Language is a playground. He calls up Mandopop videos on YouTube, and snubs American pop. He shakes down a Brazilian babysitter for bits of Portuguese, and asks for Dora the Explorer’s Spanish to be translated to English.

If he came from Boston, I tell him, his animated heroine would be Dor-er the Explorah. “I’m from Beijing,” he says, in English. “I pronounce things correctly.”

Tom Scocca is the author of “Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future.” He is the managing editor of Deadspin and a columnist for Slate, and he lives in New York.

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

ABC News: Mandatory Chinese Gives Students An Edge

PACOIMA, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Southern California is a gathering place for people from many countries and many cultures. People talk about the need to be bilingual. At one Pacoima school, Latino students are trilingual, the third language being Chinese.

High school students learn Chinese at Vaughn International Studies Academy charter school in Pacoima.

As a senior at Vaughn International, Aridai Sanchez is in her fourth year of studying Chinese. Along with learning English and Spanish in the elementary and middle grades at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center charter school, the mostly Latino student body is required to take at least two years of Chinese in high school.

"The requirement is actually two years, but I am actually on my fourth year. I wanted to continue speaking Chinese. It's really fun," said Sanchez.

A delegation of educators from China recently visited the charter school. The Chinese educators are spending more than a week in Southern California visiting grade schools and colleges to learn how American children are educated.

Charter school officials say a few of its graduates have had a chance to visit China in the past. Officials say while students gain a strong footing in Spanish and English, speaking a third language like Chinese is going to make them even more marketable for future jobs. Officials say in the coming years they'd like to offer students a choice of more languages to study.

The charter school started its mandatory Chinese classes when it instituted its high school about six years ago.

"It has been a little difficult to grasp it at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's easier," said student Belen Villanueva.

"The fact that our world is shrinking and we need each other and we need to have that communication, have them be globally ready," said Anita Zepeda, executive director of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center.

(Copyright ©2011 KABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

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.


* * *

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.

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.

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."

NBC Today Show Hosts Chinese Language Learning Segment

NBC's Today Show sponsored a segment on the importance of learning Mandarin Chinese.

According to Daniella Montalto, NYU's Institute of Learning and Achievement, learning a language at a very young age can help improve children's reading, writing, math and IQ scores.

Watch it here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39154226/vp/39418545#39418545

Museum of the Chinese in America

http://www.mocanyc.org/visit/exhibits/current/the_chinese_american_experience

With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America
With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America presents the diverse layers of the Chinese American experience, while examining America’s journey as a nation of immigrants. It interweaves the historical and political context of Chinese immigration to the United States with the personal stories and cultural traces of multiple generations to tie together three main threads:

1) The relationship between China and the United States; and its impact on Chinese Americans.
2) How Chinese Americans have perceived themselves in American society (and been perceived) over time.
3) The impact of Chinese Americans on American politics, culture, and life.



With a Single Step is organized thematically and chronologically by section:



1) Go East! Go West! (1784-1870) opens the exhibition with the flows and exchange of and people between the United States and China in the nineteenth century; how this encounter helped shape the formation of new American identities and brought America into the industrial revolution; and the diverse roles Chinese workers played in the industrialization of America.



2) Down With Monopolies! The Chinese Must Go! (1870-1930s) examines the political climate in America leading up to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and its impact as the first federal law to restrict the immigration of a specific group based on nationality, defining in legal terms who could not “become American.”



3) Imagined and Intimate (1900-1930s) shows how the idea of “Chinatown” as a foreign place developed in the American imagination through the intimate genre of photography; while Chinese laborers, excluded from entering the skilled trades, were forced to make a living by providing services to whites on an intimate level by doing laundry, cooking food, and keeping house.



4) Welcome to Chinatown! presents examples of “yellowface” in mainstream culture, and how Chinese Americans have survived in economically marginalized environments through such creative inventions like chop suey.



5) Building Community showcases an old general store – a composite of salvaged objects and memories from Chinatown stores across the United States (Los Angeles, Boston, and New York City). General stores are, at once, a supplier of everyday and specialty Chinese goods, pharmacy, post office, travel agency, and community center.


6) The Rising Spirit addresses how cultural traditions and social/political networking have knit isolated people and fragmented families and communities together.



7) Allies and Enemies (1940-1950s) presents the dramatic changes of fortune for Chinese Americans. The U.S. and China become Allies during WWII, and the Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed; political refugees of the Chinese Civil War and students stranded in the U.S. create a new wave of Chinese immigration to America; and the Cold War creates a political environment that targets Chinese Americans as potential enemies of the state.



8) Towards a More Perfect Union (1960- Present) invites visitors to explore the impact of the American social movements of the 1960s, the normalization of U.S.-China relations, and the de-racialization of immigration laws in 1965 on the changes in the Chinese American community. MOCA presents projects inspired by an idea, a question, or a discovery, that have caused ripples in the society in which we live. Through these examples, we come to see that the Chinese American experience is an ongoing project, an adventurous undertaking with changing players and inspired outcomes. Visitors are asked to tell the Museum of ongoing projects and/or personal stories that represent the journey we all make in finding community and home.



9) MOCA video archive Many Voices, One Humanity
Twelve individuals discuss their own personal connections to the Chinese American story.
1. Agnes Chan, first Asian American woman NYPD officer

2. Emily Chang, spoken word artist/actor
3. Ti-Hua Chang, broadcast journalist
4. Jeff Gammage, journalist/father of two daughters adopted from China
5. Jennifer 8. Lee, journalist, New York Times
6. John Liu, first Asian American NYC councilmember and Democratic nominee for NYC comptroller
7. Roger Brue McHayle, co-founder PNB clothing
8. Taiyo Na, spoken word poet/musician
9. Father Raymond Nobiletti, Transfiguration Church
10. Anna Sui, fashion designer
11. Frank Wu, legal scholar
12. Henry Yung Jr., descendant of Yung Wing

CLSC Year End Ceremony!

Congratulations to all our CLSC students and teachers for another wonderful year at CLSC!

For more information on how you can participate, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or email us at info@ChineseLanguageSchool.org

Please search us on Facebook under Chinese Language School of Connecticut for more photos!

Following are some of our students' performances, teachers' awards, presentation of students' final presentations.

Extraordinary Chinese Restaurant

This is a restaurant, built high into a cliff somewhere in China where, if you can actually make it there, the food is free.

From the WSJ: What's in a Name: If It's 'China,' a Pick-Me-Up

If a broker says "China," do you hear "ka-ching"?

Dozens of tiny companies have gotten big stock-market boosts simply by adding the word "China" to their names. While the total dollars at stake are small, the trend is reminiscent of the Internet bubble's heyday, when a company could launch its stock price to the moon merely by tacking ".com" onto its official name.

Intelligent Investor: The Name Trap
3:48
Columnist Jason Zweig talks with Kelsey Hubbard about the significant influence that a name can have on attracting investors.
.It is also a reminder that for all too many people, investing remains like a word-association game. Stockpicking is often driven by resemblance instead of reality; a catchy name or vivid image can fill investors' heads with dreams of a bright future that mightn't be supported by the facts.

I asked Wei Wang, a finance professor at Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, to study the returns of the 82 companies that have adopted new names containing the word "China" since late 2006. The list includes 18 last year and four so far in 2010.

Prof. Wang looked at returns from 20 trading days before the announcement through 20 days after. He found that the average stock that added "China" to its name outperformed the overall market by 31 percentage points over that period. The results held up over shorter and longer periods and after Prof. Wang removed the most extreme cases.

Golden Green Enterprises Ltd., a steel producer, became China Gerui Advanced Materials Group Ltd. on Dec. 14. Over the 40 days surrounding the switch, the shares went from $5.01 to $6.88 on the Nasdaq Global Market, a 37% gain even as U.S. and Chinese stocks were generally flat.


Heath Hinegardner
.Edward Meng, China Gerui's chief financial officer, says the name switch was meant to reflect the company's "core competency, product-offering orientation and its association with Chinese companies listed in the U.S. markets." He adds: "We did get feedback from investors that they liked the new name. But it's hard to tell if the name change impacted the share-price movement."

Many China-syndrome stocks are created in reverse mergers with "shell companies." In this maneuver, a firm with a thinly traded stock, and often without viable operations, absorbs a more-marketable business whose shares mightn't have traded at all. The company is then renamed.

Consider Apogee Robotics, a company with no revenues or assets. It merged into a firm called Advanced Swine Genetics last Sept. 30, immediately renaming itself China Swine Genetics Inc.

The company didn't announce the name change until Oct. 13, however. The next day, the stock went from $8.40 to $15.60, an 86% gain. Then it collapsed. Last week, a mere 100 shares changed hands at $4.50 on the OTC Bulletin Board.

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.Executives at China Swine, which is based in Honolulu, didn't respond to requests for comment.

The rechristened "China" companies have a total market value of only about $8 billion. Most are unlisted on a major exchange, typically trading on the OTC Bulletin Board, where brokerage costs can be high. On China Swine, the "spread" between buy and sell prices (part of the cost to trade) exceeded a piggish 40% last week.

This is far from the first time that investors have fallen under the spell of greed-by-association.

In the early 1960s, many small stocks grabbed the market's attention with names evoking the promise of the Space Age, like G-W Ameritronics (a seller of truck bodies) and Techni Electronics (a maker of massage equipment). Many of the "tronics" companies went on to lose more than 90% of their value.

In 1999, Internet-obsessed traders drove Computer Literacy Inc. up by 33% in a day on word that the stock's name would change to fatbrain.com. In 1998 and 1999, the average company that added ".com" to its name outperformed other technology stocks by an average of 53 percentage points. Scads of them later went to zero.

Between 2004 and 2007, as the price of crude oil soared, companies in the U.S. and Canada that added the words "Oil" or "Petroleum" to their names got an instantaneous 8% boost to stock performance. Then they faded.

The bottom line: In the long run, cute names don't make money; only good businesses do.

Why Baby Language DVDs and CDs Don't Work

The new highly-acclaimed book by NY Times best-selling author Po Bronson (with Ashely Merryman) expands on earlier language theories.

From "NurtureShock":

"...Kuhl (Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington) went on to discover that babies' brains do not learn to recognize foreign-language phonemes off a videotape or audiotape -- at all.

They absolutely do learn from a live, human teacher.

In fact, babies' brains are so sensitive to live human speech that Kuhl was able to train American babies to recognize Mandarin phonemes (which they'd never heaerd before) from twelve sessions with her Chinese graduate students, who sat in front of the kids for twenty minutes each session, playing with them while speaking in Mandarin.

By thge end of the month, three sessions per week, those babies' brains were virtually as good at recognizing Mandarin phonemes ar the brains of native born Chinese infants who'd been hearing Mandarin their entire young lives.

But, when Kuhl put Americna infants in front of a videotape or audito recording of Mandarin speech, the infants brains absorbed none of it. They might as well have heard meaningles noise. This was true DESPITE seeming to be quite engaged by the videos.

Kuhl concluded: 'The more complex aspects of language, such as phonetics, and grammar, are not acquired from TV exposure."

New York Times Article on Growing Importance of Mandarin

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?scp=1&sq=rise%20of%20mandarin%20changes%20the%20sound%20of%20chinatown&st=cse

October 22, 2009
Rise of Mandarin Changes the Sound of Chinatown
By KIRK SEMPLE
He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears.

Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.

The change can be heard in the neighborhood’s lively restaurants and solemn church services, in parks, street markets and language schools. It has been accelerated by Chinese-American parents, including many who speak Cantonese at home, as they press their children to learn Mandarin for the advantages it may bring as China’s influence grows in the world.

But the eclipse of Cantonese — in New York, China and around the world — has become a challenge for older people who speak only that dialect and face increasing isolation unless they learn Mandarin or English. Though Cantonese and Mandarin share nearly all the same written characters, the pronunciations are vastly different; when spoken, Mandarin may be incomprehensible to a Cantonese speaker, and vice versa.

Mr. Wong, a retired sign maker who speaks English, can still get by with his Cantonese, which remains the preferred language in his circle of friends and in Chinatown’s historic core. A bit defiantly, he said that if he enters a shop and finds the staff does not speak his dialect, “I go to another store.”

Like many others, however, he is resigned to the likelihood that Cantonese — and the people who speak it — will soon become just another facet of a polyglot neighborhood. “In 10 years,” he said, “it will be totally different.”

With Mandarin’s ascent has come a realignment of power in Chinese-American communities, where the recent immigrants are gaining economic and political clout, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College.

“The fact of the matter is that you have a whole generation switch, with very few people speaking only Cantonese,” he said. The Cantonese-speaking populace, he added, “is not the player anymore.”

The switch mirrors a sea change under way in China, where Mandarin, as the official language, is becoming the default tongue everywhere.

In North America, its rise also reflects a major shift in immigration. For much of the last century, most Chinese living in the United States and Canada traced their ancestry to a region in the Pearl River Delta that included the district of Taishan. They spoke the Taishanese dialect, which is derived from and somewhat similar to Cantonese.

Immigration reform in 1965 opened the door to a huge influx of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, and Cantonese became the dominant tongue. But since the 1990s, the vast majority of new Chinese immigrants have come from mainland China, especially Fujian Province, and tend to speak Mandarin along with their regional dialects.

In New York, many Mandarin speakers have flocked to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens, which now rivals Chinatown as a center of Chinese-American business and political might, as well as culture and cuisine. In Chinatown, most of the newer immigrants have settled outside the historic core west of the Bowery, clustering instead around East Broadway.

“I can’t even order food on East Broadway,” said Jan Lee, 44, a furniture designer who has lived all his life in Chinatown and speaks Cantonese. “They don’t speak English; I don’t speak Mandarin. I’m just as lost as everyone else.”

Now Mandarin is pushing into Chinatown’s heart.

For most of the 100 years that the New York Chinese School, on Mott Street, has offered language classes, nearly all have taught Cantonese. Last year, the numbers of Cantonese and Mandarin classes were roughly equal. And this year, Mandarin classes outnumber Cantonese 3 to 1, even though most students are from homes where Cantonese is spoken, said the principal, Kin S. Wong.

Some Cantonese-speaking parents are deciding it is more important to point their children toward the future than the past — their family’s native dialect — even if that leaves them unable to communicate well with relatives in China.

“I figure if they have to acquire a language, I wanted them to have Mandarin because it makes it easier when they go into the workplace,” said Jennifer Ng, whose 5-year-old daughter studies Mandarin at the language school of the Church of the Transfiguration, a Roman Catholic parish on Mott Street where nearly half the classes are devoted to Mandarin. Her 8-year-old son takes Cantonese, but only because there is no English-speaking Mandarin teacher for his age group.

“Can I tell you the truth?” she said. “They hate it! But it’s important for the future.” Until recently, Sunday Masses at Transfiguration were said in Cantonese. The church now offers two in Mandarin and only one in Cantonese. And as the recent arrivals from mainland China become old-timers, “we are beginning to have Mandarin funerals,” said the Rev. Raymond Nobiletti, the Cantonese-speaking pastor.

At the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which has been the unofficial government of Chinatown for generations and conducts its business in Cantonese, the president, Justin Yu, said he is the first whose mother tongue is Mandarin to lead the 126-year-old organization. Though he has been taking Cantonese lessons in order to keep up at association meetings, his pronunciation is sometimes a source of hilarity for his colleagues, he said.

“No matter what,” he added, laughing, “you have to admire my courage.”

But even his association is being surpassed in influence by Fujianese organizations, said Professor Kwong of Hunter College.

Longtime residents seem less threatened than wistful. Though he is known around Chinatown for what he calls his “legendarily bad” Cantonese, Paul Lee, 59, said it pained him that the dialect was disappearing from the place where his family has lived for more than a century.

“It may be a dying language,” he acknowledged. “I just hate to say that.”

But he pointed out that the changes were a natural part of an evolving immigrant neighborhood: Just as Cantonese sidelined Taishanese, so, too, is Mandarin replacing Cantonese.

Mr. Wong, the principal of the New York Chinese School, said he had tried to adjust to the subtle shifts during his 40 years in Chinatown. When he arrived in 1969, he walked into a coffee shop and placed his order in Cantonese. Other patrons looked at him oddly.

“They said, ‘Where you from?’ ” he recalled. “ ‘Why you speak Cantonese?’ ” They were from Taishan, he said, so he switched to Taishanese and everyone was happy.

“And now I speak Mandarin better than Cantonese,” he added with a chuckle. “So, Chinatown — it’s always changing.”

"Lucky Girl" Reading at Greenwich Library, November 8

From Mary O'Neill at ONeill@centerchem.com

"Lucky Girl" reading by author Mei Ling Hopgood at Greenwich Library November 8.

Sunday, November 8th at the Greenwich Library in Greenwich, CT ; FCC
Southern CT and FCC Westchester regions are cosponsoring a reading in
Greenwich, CT. $5 per person, preregistration required. Register
online at www.fccny.org . For more information
or to volunteer to help with this event, Mary O'Neill at
oneill@centerchem.com

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/look-east-why-chinese-lessons-are-booming-1799026.html

There is also an interesting blog and comments section beneath this article, on the web site link. Seems many believe the UK is suffering from many of the same issues the U.S. is: lack of understanding why Chinese is important, lack of certified teachers.

Look East: Why Chinese lessons are booming

Where Chinese was once an exotic subject to study, today it has taken off in many schools. Hilary Wilce finds it has won the ultimate accolade – its own GCSE textbook


Thursday, 8 October 2009

The Independent, London


Two East London schoolgirls are chattering animatedly about their families, but not in English, or in their home languages of Urdu or Bengali. Instead Shajedah Kayum and Johura Hasna are gassing confidently in Mandarin Chinese.


At Kingsford Community School, in Beckton, east London, every pupil studies Mandarin when they start at age 11, and growing numbers are now choosing it at GCSE. Last year, 15 students took the subject and 66 per cent of them achieved A or A* grades. In Year Nine, about 50 students have already embarked – one year early – on Mandarin GCSE.

Kingsford is not alone. Mandarin is fast going mainstream with about 500 schools – no one knows the precise figure – offering it as part of the curriculum, and many more in after-school clubs. The first GCSE Chinese textbook has just been published by Pearson Education, in conjunction with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, tailored to a new EdExcel exam.

The language that used to be seen as an exotic novelty is taking its place as a normal GCSE languages option.

Sceptics say that this is all just a gimmick and that classroom time could be better used to help pupils become competent in a more accessible language such as French or Spanish.

But according to school heads who offer Mandarin courses, which include language and culture, the subject opens pupils' eyes to the biggest country in the world, hones general language skills, engages boys – who relate to the visual and spatial aspects of the language – enhances students' resumes, and can be a subject in which pupils who struggle with other languages do well.

Twelve schools in Britain have now become Confucius Classrooms, receiving support from the Office of Chinese Language Council, known as Hanban, along with help from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, itself a Confucius Institute since 2006.

This allows them to grow as specialist hubs, helping other schools to bring in Chinese studies.

Kingsford, a language college for 11- to 16-year-olds, is a Confucius Classroom and believes Mandarin has brought many benefits to its pupils. The school is a new one and only moved into its current building in 2002. The original head asked colleagues to suggest innovative cross-curricular programmes and the current head, Joan Deslandes, who was then in charge of humanities, languages and technology, suggested doing something on China.

"China had just joined the World Trade Association, I was interested in Confucius and I thought it was a language which none of our children spoke, so this would be a level playing field," she says. In a school where the pupils speak 55 languages between them, finding such a language was no easy task. Even so, some governors were initially resistant.

But Mandarin triumphed and since then the school has won a national Mandarin-speaking competition, sent students regularly to visit China, and built a close link with Brighton College, an independent school in Sussex, where Mandarin is compulsory.

Three Kingsford students a year go on scholarships to Brighton College to do their A levels. Other pupils have this year moved to other independent schools, including Cheltenham Ladies College, with their applications bolstered by their Mandarin skills.

The Mandarin programme brings many national and international visitors to the school, where they listen to pupils talk and watch them perform a tai chi-based fan dance.

The whole programme has clearly given many pupils a feeling of confidence and achievement. "I really like it and I'm glad I chose it," says Johura Hasna, who is just embarking on her GCSE and says she might want to work as a lawyer using her Chinese.

She was one student who won a trip to China "where, when you started talking people were, like, 'Wow'".

Osman Abdul-Moomin, another Year Nine pupil and who won the trip, says he was struck, in China, by how well everything was organised and how hard people worked. He is delighted he is doing the subject. "Speaking Mandarin – it's a trump card!"

The school has two permanent Mandarin teachers and is looking for a third. It also gets support from Hanban teachers who come on placement from China. Linying Liu is the school's Confucius classroom manager, who is helping to write the new Chinese textbooks. She says that she could easily find a job in an independent school, but is happy in the tougher conditions that Kingsford offers.

For the head teacher Joan Deslandes, the programme is just one aspect of an education of high expectations. Mandarin is in the top three languages that employers say they want, she says.

"But any school that wants to do it will have to have the full backing of the school leadership, and will need to make an investment in curriculum time. And it will have to recognise there are no quick wins here. It will not necessarily make your exam results look good." Even so, Kingsford students, despite coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, far exceed the national GCSE average.

Mandarin has now reached take-off point in British schools with the publication of the new textbook, according to Katharine Carruthers, the director for the SSAT Confucius Institute. "For the first time it is going to look like any other GCSE," she says. "Before it could be seen as something exotic and heads could get away with a bit of teaching after school, but now it's going viral and heads are starting to think, 'I'd better take a look at this because it's obviously changed.'" Textbooks for Key Stages 3 and 2 are also in the pipeline.

According to Andrew Hall, the head of Calday Grange Grammar School, in West Kirby, the home of another Confucius Classroom, the language "has gone from novelty to mainstream" in 10 years. His school works with five other secondary schools as well as with primaries and nurseries. "The students enjoy it and parents are very supportive," he says. "There's a great and growing awareness of China."

But just how proficient are students who have gained GCSE Chinese? In speaking and listening they are not far off the level they would be in, say, French, says Katherine Carruthers. Their reading and writing, however, takes longer, which means the passages that are set for them are shorter and easier. "But there is every sign that the subject is engaging children," she says. "They love learning about the culture and it is very motivating."

The Chinese Language School of Connecticut Presents Chopstix Chinese Story Time at Old Greenwich’s Perrot Library



-- School presents activities and stories for three to five year olds --


“I am so pleased that the Perrot Library and the Chinese Language School of Connecticut are able to bring such a culturally enriching program to our community. Our children truly benefit when two wonderful institutions collaborate,” said CLSC Advisory Committee member, Robyn Wasserman.


Riverside, CT, September 19, 2009 – The Chinese Language School of Connecticut (www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org), the fully-accredited, non-profit Riverside, CT-based provider of Chinese language programs, is pleased to present Chopstix Chinese Story Time at Old Greenwich’s Perrot Library (www.perrotlibrary.org).



This program is for children ages 3-5 (and their siblings); a parent or caregiver must be present.



“Perrot is thrilled to partner with the Chinese Language School of Connecticut in adding Story Time in Mandarin Chinese to our preschool program offerings. Learning a second language not only has a positive effect on a child’s mental development, but also opens the door to other cultures!” said Perrot Library Technical Assistant Vicky Livoti.



Story times are Fridays, 1pm on 9/18, 10/2, 10/16, 10/30, 11/13. For more info www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or info@ChineseLanguageSchool.org, or visit http://greenteapop.blogspot.com.







* * *

Mandopop videos CLSC students like

Beside the Plum Blossom - Lee Hom

Hair Like Snow - Jay Chou

See My 72 Changes - Jolin Tsai

The Chinese discovered tea nearly 5,000 years ago...

The Chinese discovered the healing properties of tea nearly 5,000 years ago.

From Wikipedia: The history of tea in China is long and complex. The Chinese have enjoyed tea for millennia. Scholars hailed the brew as a cure for a variety of ailments; the nobility considered the consumption of good tea as a mark of their status, and the common people simply enjoyed its flavor.

Tea was first discovered by the Chinese Emperor Shennong in 2737 BC. It is said that the emperor liked his drinking water boiled before he drank it so it would be clean, so that is what his servants did. One day, on a trip to a distant region, he and his army stopped to rest. A servant began boiling water for him to drink, and a dead leaf from the wild tea bush fell into the water. It turned a brownish color, but it was unnoticed and presented to the emperor anyway. The emperor drank it and found it very refreshing, and cha (tea) was born.[citation needed]

While historically the origin of tea as a medicinal herb useful for staying awake is unclear, China is considered to have the earliest records of tea drinking, with recorded tea use in its history dating back to the first millennium BC. The Han Dynasty used tea as medicine. The use of tea as a beverage drunk for pleasure on social occasions dates from the Tang Dynasty or earlier.

Marco Polo discussed Chinese teas in his journals; two Russian explores brought tea to Russia in 1579.

For more on tea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea_in_China

To purchase wonderful tea in our area visit Arogya: http://www.arogya.net/

We all know tea has healing properties, gives you energy, tastes great (if prepared the right way) and is good for you.

Following are some Tea Tips:

White Tea: May dispel effects of alcohol and nicotine; acts on colds and sore throats, strong antioxidants; steep for 30 seconds at 185 degrees F, 85 degrees C; may reuse up to 4 times


Green Tea: Acts on colds, sore throats, strong antioxidants; helps dispel fat; steep for 30 seconds at 203 degrees F, 95 degrees C; may resue up to 4 times

Pu’er Tea: May regulate blood pressure, lower cholesterol, helps dispel fat, purifier, may eliminate toxins, mixing with gingeng is said to provide relief from rheumatism and arthritis; steep for 30 seconds at 203 degrees F, 95 degrees C; may resue up to 4 times

Oriental Beauty / King of Oolong Tea: Good for blood circulation and skin; good for anemia, helps enrich blood; may nourish stomach if mixed with brown sugar; may soften blood vessels; steep for 30 seconds at 203 degrees F, 95 degrees C; may reuse up to 4 times

Jasmine Tea: Dispels heat, improves eyesight; gives energy and may help relieve headache; steep for 30 seconds at 203 degrees F, 95 degrees C; may be reused up to 6 times

Litchi Tea / Black Tea: May be good for digestion and promotes energy; steep for 30 seconds at 203 degrees F, 95 degrees C; may be reused up to 3 times

Ginseng Oolong: Restores energy, protects liver and kidney; steep for 30 seconds at 203 degrees F, 95 degrees C; may be reused up to 5 times

Travelling to China!

We recently returned from a wonderful twelve day trip to China (Beijing, Xian, Hangzhou and Shanghai) with our two children, ages 9 and 13. The trip was arranged by China Connections, and was very professionally organized, terrific guides, wonderful sites, extemely courteous attention, very well organized. I would receive a reply to every email within 24 hours. http://www.china-tour.cn/

June 26

We arrived in Beijing’s sparkling new international airport, and made it thru security and the H1N1 flu check. Security came on board the plane to do a temperature scan; technicians were wearing all white, surgical masks and visor-helmets. Sort of techno-scary, but very interesting way to start our trip. Very few crowds, so easy to get thru security and immigration was a snap.

June 27

Tianammen Square and Forbidden City were amazing so historical. Lots of people, mainly tourists from Korea, Japan and around Chinese. Very few Americans or Europeans.

In the afternoon we went to the Summer Palace and rode the Dragon Boat (a ferry across the lake to the exit, definitely worth doing. Then a visit to a
pearl factory.

Dinner was at this very upscale restaurant, Baizha Da Zhai Men - costumed actors in Qing dynasty wear, it was like a courtyard home, meticulously maintained; very expensive / exclusive. Most tourists, I've heard, do not know about this restaurant - definitely worth a visit!

Our hotel is good, not as upscale as 4 star would be in the States, but very good for us, because almost no one speaks English, so Em, Becky and I have to really make an effort to speak Chinese (and sometimes we draw pictures!).

We didn’t have cold water the first morning, but they fixed it fairly quickly after I called a couple times and finally went downstairs (at 6 AM).

Emily’s Ipod with Chinese app is coming in handy to look up all kinds of words (it gives Chinese, pinyin, English, with tones).

Food is great, we found the chef will make fresh Beijing noodles right in
Front of you, for breakfast.

Our guide, Robert Huang, is warm, funny, delightful, his English is great. If you travel to China and use China Connection Tours, I would recommend you ask for Robert. (info@ChinaConnectionTours.com, ask for Michael Xu.)

June 28

Yesterday we went to the Jade Factory then on to the Great Wall, Juyonguong Pass (this is a section of the Wall I did about 3 years ago, but I did it in April, 70 degrees, not end of June, 100 degrees…)

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/scene/beijing/juyongguan.htm

We had lunch at the friendship store / cloisonne factory (I've been to this
Factory before, but they’ve renovated it, so they no longer have glass separating most of the workers which meant we were able to get up close to them while they worked, it was great.

We went to the Olympic Village, went inside the water cube,
and then went to a tea house and then to the Hard Rock for dinner (had to do it).

June 29

Today we visited the hutong area of Beijing, amazing, wonderful, in rickshaws, it covers a much larger area than I thought it would. You cannot skip this if you are in Beijing.

Then we visited Wangfujing Street, like Rodeo Drive, gorgeous, new, then on to the Temple of Heaven, a beautiful, big park, was where the royal families worshipped.

Then to dinner and to a gongfu show. It was great, very crowded, this is where all the tourists go. When we left someone managed to get into my bag and steal my wallet. (There were a lot of crowds, buses, chaotic.) You have to remember to watch your children, bags, when traveling, a good reminder.

June 30

The next day we went to the bank to get $$ from American Express and
turned out we were the first of anyone ever to try to do that, so took
1.5 >> hours, (we cancelled our field trip for the day, which was supposed to
be a 3 hour bus drive to an even more ancient hutong area, Cuandixia Village http://www.china.org.cn/travel/gallery/2008-11/13/content_16759910.htm but that was okay...our guide Robert Huang said we still had time, and could go, but we wanted to be sure we had cancelled credit cards, called insurance, etc.

Miraculously, though, after getting $$ from bank, Robert got a call, a car park attendant at the Crowne Plaza found my wallet - everything intact except cash, credit cards and ring, so we went over to pick it up. The car parking lot attendant said the wallet had been thrown under a car, so most likely what happened was that a gang of professional thieves scoped out the most tourist-y area they could find, found someone distracted (me) to accost, then within 30 minutes went to Wangfujing Street (Rodeo Drive) to charge about $12K worth of items, (including about $4K woth of clothes from Zara!) tossing my wallet with things they didn’t need out, along the way.

Surprisingly, everything left in my wallet was scrupulously in order, so the thief was very neat.

We made a trip to the Beijing Zoo, which wasn’t on our itinerary, but which China Connections graciously substituted since we had to cancel Cuandixia Village. This is another “don’t miss” in Beijing, especially if you have children. The pandas, of course, were the biggest hit, and I was surprised at the extent of the panda exhibit; I expected 2 or 3 pandas, but there were at least 6 or 8, many outside, climbing trees.


July 1

Today got up at 6, and took a walk to this great park we found, where Olympic baseball was played. People were doing tai chi, Chinese yoyo, walking dogs,
sitting outside with their birds in cages, wonderful.No matter how much you may want to sleep in, it’s worth it to set the alarm and get up to see some tai chi in the early, cool AM.

We went to Hong Qiao Flea Market, a large indoor market where you can pretty much buy anything you’d want. My children thought it was hysterical that shop girls would accost me in the aisles, sometimes grabbing me, four or six at a time, trying to get us to buy things.

Had a Beijing Roast Duck dinner, then on to the very clean, new-ish train station for the overnight soft sleeper train to Xian. We had 4 berths in a very small cabin, but very new, clean, air conditioned, so we actually all slept well.

July 2

Arrived in Xian at 8:30AM, this was tricky, at first we couldn’t find the way out / correct exit, and had to meet our guide outside the exit…but we managed, after paying someone much too much to help with bags (er shi liang kwai for oone or two large bags on wheels, 22 kwai RMB, about $3.50).

Our guide was Elsie, very knowledgable, very nice, she had a bit of a tendency to get short tempered with our questions, though!

Very hot, hotter than Beijing (if anyone has a chance to travel to China, but can make the trip in October or April, I’d recommend doing that, even if it means pulling your children out of school).

On to hotel to check in (lovely hotel, Arum International, beautiful, connected rooms, sophisticated staff, many people spoke English, easy to get an internet connection, great breakfast).

After breakfast went to Shaanxi History Museum (first capital of China in 220 BC, emperor Qin unified China, standardized currency, connected various walls to form the Great Wall). Xi'an was the center for international trade in the Tang Dynasty period - this was before the Silk Road / Marco Polo / Kubla Khan.

Then went to the Huaxian Peasant Painters Village (very famous, they came to
Greenwich a couple years ago), one woman, Mrs. Pan, who was a local crafts person when much younger, got local artists together to help promote their way of painting, and it's gotten international awards. Saw paper cutting, then back to hotel, had dumpling banquet and show (Tang Dynasty music and dance).

July 3

Today got up early, went to Terra Cotta Warriors museum, where we saw the
pottery area, kiln, a demonstration of how the warriors were made, how lacquer and pottery is made, and how the smaller (souvenirs) ones are made now, very similar, except now they use molds, back then they did not (220 BC). The Terra Cotta Warriors were part of the Emperor (Emperor Qin, above) tomb, to act as guards.

On to the actual excavation site, unbelievable and amazing, they 're still
excavating more. Met the farmer who discovered the stone warriors; he is in his 80s now, Mr. Yang.

Then on to the Big Goose Pagoda (buddhist monastery) and to the ancient
Xi'an City Wall, where we rode bikes on the wall, a great thing to do. Dinner was Szechuan hot pot, we walked through the city of Xian to get to the restaurant, much like parts of NYC. Older children would love this, you get to cook your own food.

July 4

We took an early flight to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is a very upscale, famous, water resort town, lots of BMWs,Mercedes (and with import taxes, they pay about 4X what we'd pay for the same car...).

Saw the West Lake, went boating on the lake, went to Ling Yin Temple and a
silk factory (supposedly the biggest in China), as well as a tea
plantation. Really beautiful.

Had dinner at Lou Wai Lou restaurant on the West Lake. Would definitely recommend this for the experience and views of the lake, except we seem to keep getting chicken and fish with bones, hard to eat…think about requesting “nothing with bones” when you are planning your trip, especially if you have children. (I’ll eat anything, but the bones get to me…)

Next AM took the van to Shanghai, checked in, and went to see the Yuyuan Gardens (with ancient bazaar; this market with buildings and zig zag bridge has been around for centuries), the Cheng Huang Temple (passed by, didn't go in), did Nanjing Road, then shopping, dinner, then acrobats at the gorgeous performing arts center. Puts anyhing in NYC to shame.

The next day we did the Shanghai Museum (I've been there before, we loved it), the Children's Palace (which was really a community center, strange naming), a wonderful Jade Museum, and then to the Pudong district, the Bund, TV Pearl Tower, and dinner at the top of the Pearl Tower's spinning restaurant. Again, this is something that might not make it to your itinerary unless you ask, and it's definitely worth it!

We finished up with a boat tour on the Huangpu River, which is amazing, All lights at night. This is another “must do” in Shanghai.

The next day took the maglev bullet train to the Pudong Airport and headed home!

A fantastic trip.

For more information on Chinese programs (especially Chinese language classes for children and adults, Chinese preschool classes, culture, history) please contact www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or email us at info@ChineseLanguageSchool.org.