Flying Dreams -- Tsinghua Dream Flying Abroad

Last Wednesday evening on April 14, I drove to Boston Chinatown to attend a special banquet to kick off the centennial celebration of Tsinghua University in Beijing China. It was very exciting for me to meet the president and vice president of the university, the head of the computer science and technology department, as well as many Tsinghua alumni in the greater Boston area. Together we wined and dined, talked about the old days in school, and listened to the president’s speech about Tsinghua’s development over the years and its future direction. One major theme was that as China has risen to the world stage, this well-established institution of higher education in China has striven to become one of the top universities of the world. The 130+ delegation carried this flying dream to the United States and presented it to its alumni in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, and many top level universities in the United States.

Listening to Tsinghua’s flying dream, I recalled my own flying dream over two decades ago when I flew from Beijing to the U.S. I left Tsinghua University and came to pursue a dream of my own. Now a new dream of the place where I studied and worked in Beijing has been presented in front of me here in Boston: building a better, greater Tsinghua. I am proud my alma mater and wish it to succeed. Let’s toast the Tsinghua Dream!

Boy of Beijing Meets Boy of Salem

Before the Chinese New Year, I had an amazing experience meeting the 17 year old son of one of my high school friends in Beijing.

On Monday January 25 I received an email from my high school friend in Beijing saying that her son, David, had left Beijing with his school travel group on a flight to Boston. I immediately replied to her that I live in Salem north of Boston and asked about her son’s final destination.

Tuesday I received her reply saying that her son is going to spend a week in Grafton MA attending Grafton Public High School. I had heard of Grafton, but didn’t know where it is located. I checked online and found it about one hour and a half west of Boston. Well, I thought I should try to meet my friend’s son.

Wednesday I replied to my friend that I could try to meet her son.

Thursday morning I received the reply. My friend was delighted at the possibility for her son to meet me and gave me the email address for the mother of his host family in South Grafton. I immediately sent an email to the host mother, Jen, and explained that David’s mother was my high school friend and we had not seen each other for almost 3 decades; I now lived in Salem and would like to meet David. To my surprise, Jen called me soon after the email and told me that David and his school group were visiting the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem that very afternoon, just a few blocks from my home. I then called my son’s school and asked that he be allowed to go to PEM to meet David.

Here we were, at PEM, where I met my high school friend’s son age 17 and introduced my son age 13 to him. They said “Ni Hao” and “Hello,” shook hands with each other and posed for a photo. A boy from Beijing meets a boy of Salem, and their mothers were classmates at Beijing No. 8 Middle School.

After PEM, wanting to spend more time with David as a way to connect with his mother, I joined his group touring around Salem. As the last stop they visited the Olde Pepper Companie candy shop on Derby Street. The group of Beijing students crowded the shop and bought many Valentines sweets. As David suggested, I bought a heart shaped box of chocolates and a bouquet of chocolate roses for David to take home to his mother.

David returned to Beijing just before the Chinese New Year, which arrived on Valentine’s Day this year.

Language Education—The Surge in Chinese Language Classes

This week, the New York Times reported that in American schools, both private and public, primary and secondary, there is growing interest in Chinese language education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/education/21chinese.html?hpw

The article says:

“The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Chinese, introduced in 2007, has grown so fast that it is likely to pass German this year as the third most-tested A.P. language, after Spanish and French, said Trevor Packer, a vice president at the College Board.

….

Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.”

Foreseeing this growing interest, Panda Land started to offer lessons and private tutoring for Chinese language education to children from 3 years old to high school students since January 2009. Currently several classes are offered each week. We use the textbook series published in China and endorsed by the Chinese government for teaching children of overseas Chinese families around the world. It is a very structured series with 4 books covering preschool levels and 12 books for grade levels. We started with the preschool level books to teach children in Panda Land as the introduction phase. We teach reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The Pinyin system is taught to facilitate the speaking. In addition to this formal textbook series, we also integrate materials from other sources, including the Ni Hao series published in Australia and used by many international schools around the world, as well as activity books to add cultural elements to the education. For private tutoring, we offer lessons to meet each individual’s interest and need, including working with schoolteachers to help students to meet school standards.

Many parents had told me that they wanted their children to learn Chinese. Some hope their children will be able to go to China for study once they get in college; others simply hope their children will be smart and have a good future. They all understand that learning Chinese is a long term pursuit and they need to get their children to start it now and keep studying. I am like these parents and have my own children learn Chinese.

Panda Land was established a full year ago, and we wish to provide Chinese education to more and more children. If you want your child to study Chinese or you know someone who wants their children to learn Chinese, Panda Land would like you and your friends to enjoy us today.

Scramble the Cognitive Egg with Mandarin Chinese

This morning I was snowed in, like most people on the North Shore, and felt cold and hungry. This is the first Sunday of the New Year and I was thinking of scrambled eggs for breakfast. Before doing that, I started my usual morning routine of having a cup of lemon tea and logging in to my computer. With the scrambled eggs on my mind, I was intrigued by the suggestion of scrambling the cognitive egg as described in the most emailed article in the NY Times, How to Train the Aging Brain, and want to share some of it with you.

In the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03adult-t.html?hp , the author says that, for “brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s”,

The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.

“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”

Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.

Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.

“There’s a place for information,” Dr. Taylor says. “We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”

……

Such new discovery, Dr. Mezirow says, is the “essential thing in adult learning.”

“As adults we have all those brain pathways built up, and we need to look at our insights critically,” he says. “This is the best way for adults to learn. And if we do it, we can remain sharp.”

And so I wonder, was my cognitive egg scrambled by reading that book on Thomas Jefferson? Did I, by exploring the flaws in a man I admire, create a suitably disorienting dilemma? Have I, as a result, shaken up and fed a brain cell or two?

In Panda Land, we have several adults who have put a lot of effort into learning Mandarin Chinese over the past year. Relating to their experience, I am trying to apply the suggestion and the method from this article to the situation of adults learning Mandarin Chinese.

If this article makes sense to you, let me ask you a few questions. Since Chinese language and culture are so different from those of the West, their different perception of the world can certainly provide you a challenge: Could you scramble your cognitive egg by learning Mandarin Chinese, as the article suggested learning a foreign language? Could you create a suitably disorienting dilemma by immersing yourself in the language and culture? Could you shake up and feed your brain a cell or two at a time by learning Chinese characters one by one?

I hope this will make some sense to you or at least get you thinking in the New Year. Well, I am going to make scrambled eggs for my breakfast and I like to scramble them using olive oil with lots of vegetables—onions, green and red bell peppers, tomatoes and Herbes de Provence. As a Chinese, I need to pay attention to the color, smell, and taste of the dish.

Whether you like scrambled eggs or not, let’s wish everyone in Panda Land:

A Happy and Healthy New Year! 新年快乐!

寻根(xún gēn )—Seeking Roots

Today, I found an article online, http://www.mitbbs.com/news_wenzhang/Headline/31280685.html, about the American Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman Jr., and his wife who took their adopted Chinese daughter to visit her hometown Yangzhou on Dec. 3, 2009. It said that this was her first trip back since their daughter left Yangzhou 10 years ago.

In Panda Land there are many girls from China who are learning Chinese language and culture. I hope someday when they go to China, they will feel comfortable connecting to the people and culture.

感恩节快乐(gǎn ēn jié kuài lè ) -- Happy Thanksgiving!

This past week in Panda Land, we learned how to say Happy Thanksgiving in Chinese and how to say all different food we like for Thanksgiving dinner. The Chinese word for Turkey is 火鸡 (huǒ jī ). Literally it translates to “fire chicken”. When I told students about the name they laughed and asked why. Frankly I don’t really know where the name is from. I can only relate fire to the color of the feathers of a wild turkey. When I was growing up in China, I never saw a turkey and never knew anyone who ate turkey in China. I thought it was a kind of chicken that grows in America and only Americans eat that. Now I eat turkey every Thanksgiving. In addition to learning to say turkey and other food in Chinese, we also compared Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival -- 中秋节 with American Thanksgiving and wrote about their similarities and differences. Many students related the two holidays with their celebration of harvest, gathering of families and friends, gratefulness and happiness. We learned that despite having two different cultures, Chinese and Americans celebrate their lives in a fundamentally similar way.

On the Thanksgiving Eve, I would like to give my sincere thanks to all who have been supportive to Panda Land this year.

Mandarin--The Sound of the Future

As the world is changing so is Chinatown. Earlier this year, the Boston Globe reported a story on Boston Chinatown Chinese schools whose students were starting to learn Mandarin instead of Cantonese (see “Mandarin – The Language of the 21 Century” on my blog in February). This week the New York Times has a story on Manhattan’s Chinatown adapting to the sound of Mandarin starting with the young generation http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?em .

Keeping up with current globalization and looking into the future, Panda Land brings the sound of Mandarin to Americans on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Every week we have children and adults from all walks of life actively learning Mandarin and enjoying its sound, characters, and culture.

The sound of Mandarin has come from Beijing to you closer than ever before.