What I want to learn about China

It was Monday at 3 in the afternoon.  I walked into the lower school building at the Shore Country Day School to get ready for my Chinese language and culture class with the youngsters from Readiness to 1^st grade.  As I approached the room where I meet my students, I noticed a newly decorated wall done by the 1^st grade teacher.  On the floor up against the wall there were many gray-painted shoe boxes piled up to form a segment of the Great Wall of China.  Above the “Great Wall” there were two large panels with the theme “What I want to learn about China”.  On each panel, there were many sheets from the students with their handwritten answers.  I was totally intrigued by those answers since they were like windows into the children’s minds and their curiosity about my native country.  I stood there and copied down some of the children’s writing:

Where is China?

Is there Dragon?

Are there snakes in China?

Is the Temple of Heaven on a hill?

What are abacuses for?

I would like to learn about the food that tastes good.

Do apples grow in China?

How do you write in Chinese?

I want to learn about the language in Chinese because it sounds cool.

I would like to learn about the rice paddies, the boats, the towers like the pagoda, the symbols, the cars, and the population number.

I would like to learn about the lion dance.

I would like to learn about the Great Wall of China. How long it is? How many blocks/bricks in the great wall?

What do people do in their life?

Do people weave?

What do kids play in China?

How long is school in China?

What do kids learn?

What do kids wear for holidays?

What do kids wear every day?

In the past, I have asked my students what they would like to learn, but this is the most interesting list of questions and statements from very young children.   I’ll make it a practice to ask students to write down what they would like to learn about China whenever I start a new class.

春天来了 -- Happy Spring 2012

After a mild winter, we welcomed a beautiful first day of spring on March 20^th.  In the morning after walking my son to his school, I continued to Derby Wharf.  The sky was blue, the sea was calm, the sun was shining, and the air was warm… It felt wonderful.  春天来了。(Chūn  tiān  lái  le)  Spring has arrived.  Actually, it was felt more like a summer day.

After school, I went to the Salem Athenaeum where I have my Chinese class with children on Tuesdays.  I walked upstairs with the children and opened the fan window.  The fresh spring air flew in with the warm rays of sunshine.  Sitting down together, we started to read the day’s text:

天上有太阳。 tiān  shàng  yǒu  tài  yang 。

There is the sun in the sky.

天上有月亮。tiān  shàng  yǒu  yuè  liang。

There is the moon in the sky.

天上有星星。tiān  shàng  yǒu  xīng  xing。

There are stars in the sky.

天上有云。tiān  shàng  yǒu  yún。

There are clouds in the sky.

地上有草。dì  shàng  yǒu  cǎo。

There is grass on the ground.

地上有花。dì  shàng  yǒu  huā。

There are flowers on the ground.

水中有鱼。shuǐ  zhōng  yǒu  yú。

There are fish in the water.

林中有鸟。lín  zhōng  yǒu  niǎo。

There are birds in the woods.

树上有鸟。shù  shàng  yǒu  niǎo。

There are birds on the trees.

After learning to read these sentences, children learned to write them.  At the end of the class we were all admiring this page of beautiful writing done by 8-year-old Hugo.

Enter the Dragon

On January 23^rd we welcomed the Chinese New Year of the Dragon.   This year is special since the Chinese dragon symbolizes power, dignity, and embodiment of virtue and strength.  We wish great happiness and prosperity will be brought to us.

During the last couple of weeks, I have been introducing the Chinese New Year to students at The Phoenix School, Shore Country Day School, and my students at the Salem Athenaeum.  We raised the red lanterns, read stories, learned about the Chinese zodiac, and made the dumplings.  Students learned to say dragon in Chinese: 龙(lóng) and write the character for good luck: 福(fú).

One question I got from students was: What is the Chinese dragon?  Is it real?  We learned that the Chinese dragon is considered the largest divine animal in China and its most popular mascot.  It has a cow’s head, deer’s antlers, shrimp’s eyes, eagle’s claws, snake’s body, lion’s tail, and four legs with five claws on each foot; its body is covered with scales. The Chinese dragon is a mythical creature with inexhaustible magical power: it can walk on land, swim in water, and fly in the clouds.

May you have a great happy New Year of the Dragon!

Happy New Year 2012

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year!

This New Year seems so special to me -- it’s the 25^th anniversary of my arrival in the US for graduate study at the end of 1986.  Time flies.  Please don’t tell me that I am not young any more.  I know it.  

25 years ago, I came to the US with my own American dream.   I have studied and worked hard, thrived and achieved.  In 2007, I moved to Paris with my family and saw the world from another point of view.  Standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, I realized the world had changed.  China had risen from the East.  I started to look to the east from the west, looking back to my birthplace, Beijing, and was inspired by the new globalization.

In the last three years, I have been engaged in sharing my native Chinese language and culture with local Americans on the north shore of Boston.  I have been very happy teaching young children and sharing with adults.  I have been amazed by mothers who see the future of the world and encourage their children to learn Chinese language and culture.  I have been excited to see many local schools educating their students to be the global citizens and leaders of the 21^st century.  I have felt so fortunate to be able to attend exhibitions from Beijing at the Peabody Essex Museum.

What I have seen this past year is that businesses have started engaging with China more actively.  I have trained American expats and coached software engineers for their journeys to Beijing.  I have attended events where both Americans and Chinese shared their ideas and stories in Sino-American economic development.

Gradually I have started to realize my new dream -- to build bridges between Americans and Chinese to imagine, explore, and succeed. 

As we toast the New Year 2012 and get ready to light the firecrackers for the Year of the Dragon, I look forward to having more of my dream come true.  

If you want to learn Chinese yourself, or cultivate your children’s Chinese heritage, or simply raise them as tomorrow’s citizens of the world, I am at your service.  Panda Land also provides consulting and services to business and organizations for their efforts in connecting between America and China.

Please feel free to contact me if I can be any help to your endeavor in the New Year.

Best regards,

Judy Wang Bedell

  

Panda Land 

Chinese Lessons for Americans - friendly, engaging, personalized.

Cross-Cultural Education and Consulting - bridging the gap in a personal way.

www.pandalandchinese.com

Bilingual and Executive Function

As I help my children to learn to manage their daily routines, schoolwork, and social life, I have heard the child development term “executive function” and attended seminars on helping children develop their “executive function”.  Suggestions include check lists, post-it notes around the house, agenda books for organization, a 5-point scale to regulate behaviors and emotion, alternative approaches, flexibility, etc.  It is all rather challenging for children under 16 years old in today’s busy world.  Experts say the frontal and prefrontal cortex won’t be fully developed until 22 to 25 years old.  Meanwhile, we as parents need to be their surrogates and executive officers.

Being a young child and a teenager’s executive officer is certainly not an easy task.  I hope my kids will have strong executive function skills and manage their life effectively.  Today I read that bilingual ability may help develop executive function.  That’s worth noting.

“Over the past decade, Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, has shown that bilingual children develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain’s so-called executive function.

These higher-level cognitive abilities are localized to the frontal and prefrontal cortex in the brain. “Overwhelmingly, children who are bilingual from early on have precocious development of executive function,” Dr. Bialystok said.

Dr. Kuhl calls bilingual babies “more cognitively flexible” than monolingual infants…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html?hpw

A Good Start to the New School Year

Today is a beautiful day, feeling more like summer than fall.   For my son’s family homework day, we went to the Russell Orchards farm in Ipswich for apple picking.  We took the hay ride into the orchard. With the blue sky and red apples hanging on trees it was picturesque.  Walking around the orchard with the sweet air, we were eating while picking apples off the tree.  It was a very nice way to unwind from the first week of teaching for Panda Land Chinese Fall 2011 and helping my own children settle into their new school year.

This week I was happy to return to Shore Country Day School to teach Chinese for its afterschool enrichment program.  I said Ni Hao to one class of 2^nd to 4^th grade students and another of 5^th grade students.  Some of them studied with me last year and happily return to learn more; others are new students who were eager to learn Chinese with me.   

On Tuesday at the Salem Athenaeum, we resumed our children’s Chinese class.  A new girl from China joined us.  I was glad to see that she and the other students were so friendly with each other.  Saturday I taught two lovely young children age 3 & 5 (brother and sister) their first Panda Land Chinese lesson.  They sang the children’s song of Liang Zhi Lao Hu (Two Tigers) to me -- Chinese lyrics to the same melody as “Frère Jacques”.  At the end of each class, I gave each child moon cakes to celebrate the Chinese Autumn Moon Festival.

At Panda Land we have children of all different backgrounds learning Chinese together.  I felt so lucky to have such a wonderful opportunity to teach these American children my native language and share with them my own heritage.

American Common Touch in China

This past week, I have been reading news about Vice President Joe Biden visiting China, mostly about visiting Beijing since I am originally from there. What I enjoyed most is the reports about Joe Biden going for lunch in a local restaurant in Beijing. The place, the people, and the food were all so authentic and touching to me. Mr. Biden stepped into this everyday life of ordinary people in Beijing, and we got a chance to see it. For the last few years, we’ve heard so much about China’s economic development and its rising role in the world, but this episode of Joe Biden mingling with ordinary people in an ordinary place in Beijing captured my heart -- Americans and Chinese are getting closer and closer. We are not only talking about the big political and economic issues, but also getting connected in simple everyday life, sharing soybean paste noodles, steamed pork buns, cucumber salads…

In a Chinese report I read, Joe Biden was referred as ye ye (grandfather) introducing his sun nu (granddaughter) to China. They toured the Forbidden City and walked on the Great Wall. In the restaurant at lunch, Joe Biden was introducing his granddaughter to the Chinese: “This is my granddaughter.” His 18-year-old granddaughter Naomi has studied Chinese for 5 years. During the trip, she has been very helpful to her grandfather with translation of Chinese.

Someday, I would like to introduce China to my children and show them around in Beijing. But I know I need to put in the effort now. They need to learn Chinese and get to know the culture. I am sure if you want to introduce your children to China someday, you would want them to learn Chinese now.