Children’s Chinese Class in Fall 2013

Hope you all enjoyed the summer.  As the new school year is about to start, Panda Land is preparing a new Chinese class for young children, to be held after school on Wednesdays at The Salem Athenaeum.  Children will learn how to speak Chinese with the tones, how to write Chinese with the strokes, and listen to stories in Chinese.  In addition to language study, children will learn about Chinese culture through stories.

This is a wonderful opportunity to introduce children to Chinese language and culture and enrich their study.

If you are interested to sign your children up for the class, please contact Judy Wang Bedell.  For more information about Panda Land you can visit www.pandalandchinese.com .  Please feel free to pass the word around.

Red, White, Blue, and Fireworks

Today we had our first summer class.  We learned how to say different colors in Chinese.  On the day before Independence Day, I had the children write down the Chinese characters for red, white, and blue.  I also encouraged them to think of words for colors when they watch the fireworks tomorrow night.

Here are some words for colors:

English	Chinese	Pinyin
black	黑色	hēi sè
blue	蓝色	lán sè
brown	咖啡色	kāfēisè
gold	金色	jīn  sè
gray	灰色	huī sè
green	绿色	lǜ sè
light blue	浅蓝色	qiǎn lán sè
maroon	栗色	lì sè
orange	橙色	chéng sè
pink	粉红色	fěn hóng sè
purple	紫色	zǐ sè
red	红色	hóng sè
silver	银色	yín sè
violet	紫罗兰色	zǐ luó lán sè
white	白色	bái sè
yellow	黄色	huáng sè

Happy 4th of July!

Teaching Boys Mandarin Chinese

In the school year of 2012-2013, most of my Chinese students were young boys, ranging from 7 to 14 years old.  I wasn’t teaching at an all-boy school or specifically favoring boys.  I have taught many girls in the past and enjoyed them very much.  However this year it happened to be this way.  I don’t want to promote any gender stereotypes, but do find it very interesting to teach these boys with their smart and active minds. 

In one class I had three second-graders, all active and fun-loving boys.  They also loved to learn Chinese.  One’s favorite activity was writing Chinese characters, another’s was to read and speak phrases in story books, and the third boy was happy to do whatever the other two liked to do.  They also liked to sing; they were very young and picked up the tunes very easily, so sounded just like Chinese children.  One day they were saying in my class, “Studying Chinese is not a race.  By studying Chinese, we learn to focus then we can unlock our potentials.”  Hearing these words come out of their mouths, I knew they had learned more than just Chinese from my teaching. 

In the other class, I had two sixth-graders who were very intelligent and passionate about learning Chinese.  One boy was very particular about learning to write each character in correct stroke order and to say each word in perfect tones; another took a more naturally easy approach and especially liked reciting Chinese poems and songs.  We talked about Chinese history and how it relates to the rest of the world.  At the end of the year, I introduced Chinese chess to them which they enjoyed immensely.

Two other boys studied Chinese with me this year.  One is a 9-year-old who has been studying with me for four years now.  He is so dedicated to Chinese study, does everything I ask him, from learning the Pinyin, speaking phrases, and writing characters.  He especially enjoyed his Chinese calligraphy lessons.  The other student was an eighth-grader who had studied Chinese for two years in Hong Kong.  He has been my most advanced student so far.  I admired his study habits which I believed he had adopted in Hong Kong.  I also appreciated his understanding of Chinese culture and the sense of global citizenship.  We had many interesting conversations on Eastern and Western culture.

It’s been a busy and rewarding year.  I am so happy to share my knowledge and heritage with people in our community.  I know that more and more young people will study Chinese in this changing world and I will be glad to help.

Salem Education Day

Introduction to Chinese Writing and Calligraphy

 Workshop for School-Age Children and Adults

At the Salem Athenaeum

Together we will learn about Chinese characters, discover the concepts and rules of Chinese calligraphy, and make the ink, hold the brush, practice strokes, and write on rice paper.  While you learn calligraphy, you will discover how to master your mindfulness, your breathing, and even your movement.

The instructor is Judy Wang Bedell, who was born, raised, and educated in Beijing China.  Since 2009 she has operated Panda Land, an enterprise in which she teaches Chinese language and culture to people on the North Shore.  She has taught in The Salem Athenaeum, Peabody Essex Museum, The Phoenix School, and Shore Country Day School.

Celebrating through Food

Every culture has its own way of celebrating life through food. 

I remember the first year I came to the US; I was invited to a Congregational church in Storrs, Connecticut as an international student to have the traditional Thanksgiving meal.  I learned that turkey and potatoes are the food to eat for Thanksgiving.  A couple of years later on the 4^th of July, I was invited to a backyard barbecue in New London CT and then to watch the fireworks.  I learned that grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, and watermelons are the food to eat for Independence Day celebrations.  After I had my own family in the US, I adopted many of these American food traditions.  We have roast turkey for Thanksgiving, honey-glazed ham for Christmas, colored eggs for Easter, hamburgers and hotdogs for the 4^th of July, chocolate cake for birthdays, champagne for the New Year, chocolate for Valentine’s Day, etc.  As a bicultural family we have some of my Chinese food traditions as well.  I make Chinese dumplings (jiao zi) for Chinese New Year, tea eggs for Qing Ming (the tomb-sweeping holiday in spring), noodles for birthdays, and moon cakes for the Autumn Moon Festival.

For the Chinese, food is an important part of our life.  To celebrate holidays and special occasions, families and friends get together to enjoy big meals.  Food also embodies our good wishes.  For example, dumplings symbolize prosperity; apples are for peace and safety, oranges for good luck, peaches for longevity, fish for abundance.  This year the Chinese New Year is on February 10^th; to celebrate the Year of the Snake, I will make Chinese dumplings next Saturday.

Enclosed are links to four episodes of the BBC show Exploring China: a Culinary Adventure, which has interesting stories on how Chinese people celebrate their life and culture through their food.  I hope you enjoy watching them.

ep1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPfoxBhLLuk

ep2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg1fJH46QuE

ep3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVZKpYk19GE

ep4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV8VtETD0hc

Happy Year of the Snake!

Families, Relatives, and Children’s Names

Holiday season is the time to relax with families, relatives, and friends.  In this holiday season, I have focused on teaching Chinese family and relative names (family titles, not their giving names) to children.  We started with the words for family and home, my family, I love my family, mom, dad, older/younger sisters, older/younger brothers, and I, myself.  For older children, we learned how to address extended family members including father-side relatives and mother-side relatives and those by marriage.

In the traditional large Chinese family, a complex system with rules and protocols was developed to keep the family’s well-being, with each member having its own role and duty to fulfill.  Therefore each member of such a large family has its own unique family name (title). 

When I teach these family names to children, they often think it is too confusing. When I teach adults, they don’t like the idea that maternal relatives are considered outsiders of the main family tree.  Indeed, it can be hard to remember all the names for different relatives based on relations. 

By contrast I often feel that English family names are not clear enough.  When my husband introduced his uncle to me at a family gathering, “This is Uncle Chuck,” I had no clue how this Uncle Chuck related to him (he turned out to be my husband’s 三 姑 父 san gu fu, i.e. father’s third older sister’s husband).  When a friend of mine introduced me to his “sister-in-law”, again I was confused.  How did this woman relate to him?

Chinese family structure has changed dramatically in the last thirty years due to the one-child-per-family-policy.  Nowadays, many Chinese families have one child.  Therefore it becomes a more top- heavy tree:  four grand-parents, two parents, and one child. 

With this new structure, family relationships also change.  In the traditional way, a woman would use her husband’s family name once married and children carried the family line by having the father’s family name.   Since the 1950s, women have kept their maiden names even after getting married, but children mostly carry their fathers’ family names.  Now with one child, we hear stories of the husband and wife fighting over which family name to give to their single child.  I guess hyphenated family names haven’t taken off in China yet.

Hope you enjoy the holidays with your families, relatives, and friends!

Hosting Chinese Students

This summer for two and a half weeks I had an opportunity to co-host two Chinese students with my neighbor.  It’s a great experience for the students and host families.

On a Thursday evening, we went to Endicott College to pick up our boys.  We saw many families there expecting Chinese students.   It was a friendly and exciting atmosphere.   My son was eagerly waiting for the students’ arrival.   Then two Peter Pan buses came and we saw Chinese students coming off the buses group by group.   Which ones were our boys?  All we had seen before were two profiles of the two young Chinese boys ages 11 & 12.   There were girls and boys, ages 11 to 18.  I kept my eyes on the younger boys in the crowds.  I spotted a boy wearing a T shirt printed with a Rubik’s cube holding a purple suitcase handle.  I stepped over and asked his name.  Yes, I got one of our boys.  Through him, we found the other boy. They called themselves David and Jerry.  With excitement, we loaded their suitcases and had them get into the car.  As we drove out of the parking lot, my co-hostess said to the students: “Please put on your seatbelts!”  The boys followed the instruction.  I noticed they didn’t do it automatically like my son did.  Okay, they were fresh from China!

We had a welcome party in my neighbors’ backyard.  My older son grilled hamburgers.  It’s what they expected as typical American food.  David liked the cheeseburger; Jerry didn’t like the cheese.  Before they settled for the night, David asked, “How do we get to school tomorrow morning?”  Then he emphasized,  “It is very important.”  I was impressed by their serious attitude towards study.

Yes, the next morning they got up at 6:30 am, had breakfast, and went to school.

This was their English immersion program.  They took classes and went on field trips, including to NYC.  They lived with American families and experienced everyday life.

My own two boys had time to play with them, have dinner together every night, watch the Olympic Games together, share computer games, play ball in the backyard, and swim at the Y.  For two weeks, the boys lived as part of our family.  We went shopping together.  We took them to a baseball game, watched my younger son’s basketball games and Martial Arts practice.  We went to church and watched my older son play piano at the Sunday service.  They also met and played with other American children in our house.

Over the last weekend, we celebrated David’s 12^th birthday.  He had his mother on his iPhone watching our celebration.  With his iPhone, he was showing my house to his mother in China and I was able to see his mother and father and talk to them.  It was quite an amazing experience.  The world is connected more closely than ever before.

Before they left, Jerry gave me some fine white tea from his hometown and showed me how to make the tea properly.  David gave my boys some unusual Rubik’s cubes which they took to immediately.

After they left, Jerry called me via video phone from Toronto airport and I saw him and David there.  Jerry called me again after he got home.  Through the video phone he showed me his apartment and a room for my younger son to stay in when he visits China someday.  I got to see his Mom and Dad as well.  David has also emailed me and said he enjoyed the trip very much and he had taken on a new hobby:  playing Lego after seeing all the Lego sets built by my older son in our house.

It was very sweet.  I know that I have two boys attached to me in China now.

Quotes of the Chinese students:

Jerry:  My favorite American food is Hot Dogs.

David:  Shanghai is quieter than New York.