Hi, we’re Caroline (16) and Christine (13)! Our parents are Taiwanese Americans who emmigrated from Taiwan in their tween years. We were born in The Tar Heel State and were first raised in the rural eastern part on a four acre lot before moving to metro Atlanta in 2017. Raised in a bilingual household in English and Mandarin Chinese, my sister and I want to share with you the milestones of our Chinese language acquisition to inspire in you that achieving high level proficiency in Chinese while growing up in an anglophone society is possible and very much meaningful!

Before we dive into the details, we should answer the question of the why.  Why should an American or anyone NOT living in Chinese speaking countries learn Chinese, a language almost four times as difficult to learn for anglophones when compared to Spanish or French? 

For some, Chinese is the mother language of their parents or grandparents, so learning it allows them to have a deeper linguistic, emotional, and cultural connection with their parents or extended family, or… it’s just something they do to make their parents happy or to gain another AP credit.  Others learn Chinese to know more about one of the world’s richest and most ancient civilizations and to communicate with nearly one-fifth of the world’s population. 

Why else is the Chinese language important to Americans? Well, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew from about half a trillion USD to fourteen trillion USD in just one generation’s time (1993~2019), trailing only to that of the US (~21 trillion USD in 2019) and became the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity (PPP) by 2015. Over the past 25 years, the US-China relationship has shifted from talk of “strategic partner” during the Clinton years, to “strategic competitor” during the Bush years, and now to mention of “rival” and “adversary” during the Trump administration.

Most recently, the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic tragedy shows that, when China coughs, the world not only shudders, it literally goes into seizure, sending our people AND our economy into the ICU, not to mention our personal freedom (when can we go back to school ?!).  Early hints of a possible looming disaster from China were first communicated in, you guessed it, the Chinese language, through news networks and social media.

Regardless of the nature of Sino-American relationship and world-wide supply chain dynamics, China has and will continue to wield enormous influence on the world stage, affecting the distribution and price of just about every commodity and product in the world and the geopolitics of every nation. There is a reason why famed commodity investor Jim Rogers moved to Singapore in 2007 to raise his children so that they may learn Chinese well, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed innovation at a forum in Beijing in Chinese in 2014, and that President Obama started an initiative “1 Million Strong” back in 2015 with the goal of getting one million students to learn Chinese by 2020. Arabella Kushner, President Trump’s granddaughter, also learns Chinese, even singing Chinese songs for PRC president Xi Jinping during his 2017 US state visit.

For all these reasons, an American workforce with talents well versed in Chinese with the ability to comprehend and analyze primary information there, would greatly serve our national interest, particularly when combined with the latest artificial intelligence technology.

Now that we’ve established why, the following is what my sister and I did.  Keep in mind, however, that learning a language without practical use is of little benefit to the learner.  The purpose of learning a language is not for a grade, but for its practical application. My sister and I transitioned from learning Chinese to applying Chinese after we moved to Atlanta, first by starting a family Chinese pop band in 2018 and later by becoming the first two members of a new secondary school Chinese debate team in 2019 (likely the only one in the US).  Our band performs about six times every year at local community events with crowds averaging 250.  With the current stay-at-home order, we’re working toward releasing our own singles on YouTube later this year instead. 

In the summer of 2019, our five-member debate team competed in the fifth annual “Debate Asia” held in Taiwan against mostly native Chinese speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand with about 500 competitors.  We debated topics such as “School-based instructor vs. extracurricular application is better at elevating students’ IT application capability” and “Subscription-based movie websites promote vs. hinder the art of cinema.”  Our team performed better than 14 out of 31 teams in our division and won the Popularity Award.  In addition, a fellow member and I each won an “Outstanding Debater” title.  Unfortunately, our 2020 team cannot compete in mainland China this summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  At the moment, we are conducting online practice debates with school teams from Asia, debating topics such as global warming and online anonymity.  Furthermore, with the help of our coach, we are hoping to set up a mini-online international Chinese debate competition over the summer.

In short, we hope our website fills you with excitement about the possibilities, with applications as wide ranging as Chinese pop band and Chinese debate team, and encourages students who have achieved higher-level Chinese proficiency to start applying Chinese in practical ways according to their interest and imagination.  Your knowledge of Chinese may later come to be indispensable to our “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Best wishes,

Caroline

4-2020