Mandarin Mashup July 4, 2012

The Long and Winding Road to Chinese-language proficiency: Part 1 Olga - GoChengdoo (blog)

Learning how to speak Chinese is at the top of the list for plenty of foreigners who find themselves in China. Just how lofty a goal is that? Pretty lofty, judging by most learners' accounts. In one of our early issues (No. 7, "Culture Hopping," November 2007) we asked three advanced learners of Mandarin about their experiences studying Chinese. Nearly five years later, we caught up with them again to find out about their progress.

Olga, Part 1 (2007)
Olga, 21, from Kursk, Russia, has spent four years in China and is currently pursuing a master's degree in world economics at Sichuan University.

Olga, 21, from Kursk, Russia, has spent four years in China and is currently pursuing a master's degree in world economics at Sichuan University.

What made you interested in studying Chinese?
When I was around 8 years old, I just felt that China attracted me a lot. It seemed to be a very mysterious country with interesting culture and history. It was a challenge to learn this language—I really wanted to understand China and Chinese people.

When did you start studying Chinese and where?
At the time I decided I wanted to study Chinese, there were no Chinese people in my town, nor were there any Chinese textbooks. When I was 10, I went to the Chinese embassy in Moscow and asked where I to find books for studying Chinese. They were really surprised and touched that such a small girl was crazy about China and presented me some materials for learning Chinese. How excited I was! But actually I started really studying only when I came here. After two years I passed the HSK level 8.

What other languages have you studied or are you studying?
English, Japanese, and I just started to learn Tibetan. But I want to learn more languages, maybe in the future.

Does your knowledge of Chinese help you study Japanese?
Of course! Because I'm taught Japanese in Chinese!

Why did you choose to study world economics?
I think it's going to be useful in the future. Whatever I'll be doing, it's good to be familiar with what's going on in the world. Also I want to study more professional Chinese language.

Does the program teach you about dealing with business culture here?
Life in China is the best teacher for this. The longer you live here, the more you deal with people, the deeper you know them. These things come with experience.

What is the most important thing to remember when learning Chinese?
If you are interested and have the wish to learn and to communicate with people, that's enough. Patience and lots of practice, of course, and "xuexi, xuexi, zai xuexi," as great Lenin said!

What was your undergraduate thesis about? How long did it take to write?
The topic was "Relative structural and cultural contrastive analysis of Russian and Chinese proverbs." It was about 20,000 characters. Preparation took a long time. Actually, during all these years I was collecting proverbs from both languages, and I'm still very interested in this cultural and linguistic subject.

What is the content of your courses now?
For the first semester: economics (including some specialized classes), Marxism ("Das Kapital!"), Japanese, business English. But mostly it's based on independent study and research.

How do your classmates and professors react do the presence of a foreigner?
They are friendly and help me all the time. They wonder how I can write the lectures down in Chinese characters almost as fast as they do, mixing it with Russian at the same time. The only mafan thing is it's too obvious if I don't show up to class!

Olga, Part 2 (2012)
Olga (虹韵) is from Kursk, Russia and has spent nine years in China. In her mid-20s, she speaks Mandarin, English, and Japanese and studied Tibetan in addition to her native Russian. She currently works as a news anchor for Hong Kong STV (香港卫视).

How would you describe your current Chinese level compared to your level in 2007?
Of course it's much better now! When I started this job, I realized that I still have a bit of a Sichuanese accent. So I had to learn a lot of things again to make it closer to the required professional news broadcast level.

You earned your bachelor's degree in Chinese from Sichuan University, for which you wrote a 20,000-character thesis on "Relative structural and cultural contrastive analysis of Russian and Chinese proverbs." That sounds tough. Then you completed a master's degree in world economics! What was the most difficult part of that?
My master's thesis was about Sino-Russian energy cooperation, and it was 50,000 characters! That was not easy. What else? Having no heating in the classroom in wintertime was tough!

Which classes were most useful to your career?
International economics, economic cooperation, some theory, and even "Das Kapital!" When you deal with news, everything is useful. At the very beginning I was doing a "Financial Update" show, so it helped me a lot.

Do you think moving to China as a teenager made it relatively easy for you to adapt? Over one-third of your education has been within the Chinese system!
For sure! Sometimes I feel totally Chinese; I tell many people that I grew up in China, and that's true! Now it's easier for me to speak and write Chinese than even Russian. But working in China is another experience.

Speaking of, how did you get your job as an anchor?
I found Hong Kong TV at a job fair in Beijing. CCTV invited me as well, but finally I decided that Hong Kong might be better. There were a few interviews, and afterward they sent us to Zhejiang Media University (in Hangzhou) for intensive training courses in broadcasting for a month.

What is a typical workday for you?
Now we are making an one-hour daily news-magazine show called "截击时事" ("Catch the Point"). It covers world news, reading and analyzing newspapers, Taiwan news (my part), and discussing hot Internet topics. We prepare all the news, materials, topics, newspapers, etc; editing; then make-up. We start our live show at 7:30 p.m.

Do you ever have problems understanding when you're on the air? What do you do then?
TV is team work, and sometimes you have to understand each other without words, especially if it's a live show. Our motto is: even if you make a mistake, don't stop! We have a great team so even if something happens, we can handle it and leave a funny memory for the future.

You went from a "free-spirited" student with hair wraps and hippie clothes to a very conservative work environment. How was that transition in your life, and what are your plans for the future?

I think I didn't change! If you see me wearing a formal suit and telling you about the stock market, it doesn't mean I've lost my "love and peace" spirit. And of course I still hope to make an environmental or traveling show in the future, something meaningful to me. Keep an eye out for that!

A splash of Mandarin at the Waltham YMCA

The word parents use most to describe Qing Zhang is “strict.”

A group of parents sitting in the bleachers at the Waltham YMCA’s pool said the word multiple times to describe why they chose Zhang to teach their kids how to swim. Zhang doesn’t let the kids play around too much, they said. She also teaches them sound swimming techniques, correcting every little imperfection, until the kids are zooming up and down the pool with the ease of a seasoned swimmer.

Inside the pool, however, Zhang is anything but a stern taskmaster. She smiles repeatedly and her instruction, while firm and direct, is good-natured and encouraging.

“Strict in a nice way” is how Carrie Wu described Zhang.

Wu has two daughters, 8-year-old Clara Fu and 6-year-old Sarah Fu, who are thriving in Zhang’s class and have made major strides in their endurance in the pool and their swimming technique since they started coming to Zhang’s Sunday classes at the Waltham YMCA a year and a half ago.

“We really love her,” said Wu.

Better technique isn’t the only benefit students get from the Zhang’s instruction. Step closer to the pool, and one hears that the language being spoken in the water is not English, but Mandarin.

A native of China, Zhang is bilingual in English and Mandarin. Carly Lindahl, the aquatics director for the Waltham YMCA, said the idea for a Mandarin swim class resulted from positive feedback from Zhang’s swimming classes and an increased interest from Chinese parents to have their kids learn swimming in Mandarin.

The class quickly took off in popularity, and Zhang now teaches five swim classes in Mandarin every Sunday.

“We just saw a demand for it,” said Lindahl. “We tried it out and people kept signing up.”

Lindahl said registration is still open for families interested in signing up for Zhang’s classes, and encouraged them to call 781-966-3630 or visit ymcaboston.org/waltham for more information.

Some parents have decided to enroll their children in Zhang’s class even though they themselves don’t have proficiency in Mandarin.

“I’ve had parents say, ‘well, I think (Zhang) is a great instructor, and hey it wouldn’t hurt if my child picked up a couple words from a different language,’ ” said Lindahl.

Two of those parents are Elizabeth and James Hill, a married couple who decided to bring their daughters Aurora and Irene to Zhang’s class to further their Mandarin education. Aurora and Irene are also in the Mandarin immersion program at Martin Luther King Jr. School in Cambridge.

“We felt it was really important,” said Elizabeth Hill. “We’re a monolingual family, we only speak English, so we wanted to have them have the opportunity to get language instruction every day from the time they were in kindergarten all the way through. We thought Mandarin was a great option.”

She said they chose Mandarin as the language to focus on because of the enormous amount of people in the world who speak it and because of studies that indicate that speaking the language utilizes both the right and left sides of the brain.

Aurora, who had stepped out of the pool while her sister got in, said she enjoys the classes.

“I like it because we get to learn how to swim,” said the 5-year-old. “I like (Zhang).”

When asked how many words she knows in Mandarin, Aurora immediately began reciting a short skit she wrote for an assignment in school.

“I am Aurora. I am a flower girl,” she started to say, in Mandarin.

Her assignment was to describe what she wanted to be when she grew up. Aurora chose a florist as her answer.

As she continued speaking in Mandarin, a woman nearby commended her for her pronunciation.

Hill said she was grateful to find out that Zhang accepts students who are not necessarily proficient in Mandarin.

“She’s been so welcoming to them and as she realizes the level of Chinese that they have, she speaks more to them,” said Hill, adding that Zhang has grown to know her daughters and how to interact with them. “She knows where to push, where not to push and she really has high expectations which is such an important part of teaching. We’re just lucky to have this program.”

Yanping Cui, the mother of student Derek Chen, said she preferred Zhang’s teaching style to the more laid-back instruction her son received from his previous teachers. Chen has been in Zhang’s class for five weeks now and he understands both English and Mandarin.

“She is more strict compared to other teachers,” said Cui. “She makes sure your gestures and technique have to be right.”

Cui said she wants Chen to learn proper technique early in life.

“When you get older, it’s harder to change it,” she said.

Zhang started swimming in her native China as a girl, and was being groomed to swim professionally for her country. She was a gifted athlete, also excelling at basketball.

But once the Cultural Revolution ended in China, and college was open to anyone who was interested, Zhang concentrated her efforts on getting accepted into one of China’s top colleges, and her work paid off. She was one of 25 students accepted into a computer science and software engineering program at one of the top 10 colleges in the country.

A car accident after her first year in college left Zhang with a serious brain injury, losing a portion of her language, logical thinking, balance and emotional control. At one point, Zhang said she didn’t even recognize her mother and father.

She didn’t let the disability stop her. Zhang also excelled in academics, receiving a degree in business in China before moving to the United States and studying at Northeastern University, where she completed her MBA. Eventually, she took on a job as a policy analyst for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“If I don’t say anything, people will not recognize that I have severe disabilities,” said Zhang, who has been able to recover some of her brain functions since the accident.

As she got older in life, Zhang decided to revive one of her passions in life: swimming. She signed up for a YMCA membership through their financial assistance program. Later, she became a lifeguard through the Y’s certification courses, and began teaching swim lessons.

Not only do students learn swimming and Mandarin in her class, but also physics, said Zhang.

“I tell the kids not only what they should do, but I usually explain to them, from a physics point of view, why they should do that,” she said. “Once they know why, they will do it in a lot better way instead of simply following rules.”

Zhang, who lives in Lexington, came to the United States in 1994. Her son, Luke Zhang, goes to her classes and helps out. He has even become friends with many of the students, she said.

Two of Zhang’s students recently went to a tryout for the Bernal’s Gator Swim Club, which is run from the swimming pool at Bentley University, and is considered one of the top swimming programs in the region.

Zhang said both of her students graded out as gold level swimmers in their age group.

“I was very proud of them when they told me,” said Zhang.

At the end of one of her classes, Zhang stands in the pool by a swarm of floating children with her hand held high.

She asks each of them to try to give her a high five. Each one tries, some multiple times, as Zhang tries to test their strength and ability to leap out of the water. After each attempt, successful or not, Zhang – the “strict” teacher – enthusiastically tells the student “good job” and pats them on the back.

Ignacio Laguarda can be reached at 781-398-8004 or ilaguarda@wickedlocal.com.