My Early Start: Learning Chinese

Chinese & Western etiquette

Hey, it's Wesley again.  Today I'm here to talk about the differences between Chinese and Western etiquette.  I, myself am full Chinese blood, but I have been raised in both Chinese and Western culture with all different types of rules.  Since the rules are so different I sometimes get confused and maybe do something that could not be appropriate.  One way that Chinese and Western etiquette differ is that after you are done eating your meal, it is ok to let out a burp in Chinese etiquette.  But in Western etiquette some people would consider burping after a meal quite rude or disgusting.  I always have thought that it does feel better to burp after a large meal but I do see how people could find it disgusting like my mom.

Wesley

Tennis

Hey, it's Wesley.  I've recently started the fun sport of tennis again.  I actually started a couple  years ago, and I learned the basics with my coach John.  After a while, I stopped playing completely and lost contact with my coach.  But during the summer, I decided to go to a tennis camp with my friends and see if I still wanted to continue playing or not.  I went there for a while and I could hit the ball a little better.  Then I saw my old coach John on the court teaching some other kids.  Then I started having a few lessons with him and now I'm good enough to play in the Sunday club group.  Every Sunday I go there and play with a bunch of kids for practice and if I have time, my mom will even schedule a private lesson with him to learn how to really improve my strokes.  I love playing tennis a whole lot and I also like trying new sports.  What sports do you like?  Oh yeah, tennis is called

(網球) wăng qíu in Chinese.

We recently completed filming Volume 5 of the Early Start Mandarin Chinese series titled Sports and Games MyEarlyStart.com .  We introduce many sports, and tennis was one of them.  Nikolai and I had to rally back and forth for quite a while before they got enough footage.  It was fun, but tiring.

Wesley

Learning Chinese

I attend Chinese American International School. In the lower school (grades 1-5), you have half day of English class, and half day of Chinese class.  But now that I'm in middle school (grades 6-8), we have less time in Chinese class because our time is separated with 3 double periods with English language arts and social studies and Math and Science.

The way I learned most of my Chinese though, was from my mom, my dad, and my grandparents speaking to  me in Chinese while I was a kid.  Chinese was actually my first language and I learned English quickly later.  Sometime I really feel like I should be speaking a lot more Chinese with my family members to improve it. 

Every day in Chinese class we read different Chinese stories about Chinese history.  Then we discuss it with our seat partners and look up any words we don't know in the Chinese-English dictionary.  Then we discuss it as a class and students jot down any new phrases that they learned in their little notebook that we all have.  We also have a daily phrase that we learn that is made up of four or more characters.  We learn the meaning of each character in that phrase and then we are able to decipher the whole meaning of the phrase.  Learning a new language takes lots of practice and work.  If you don't practice your new language enough, you will soon loose your fluency and all the practice in the past will go to waste.  Guess I'd better get back to work now.

Wesley

Chinese or Western food?

I am raised in a Chinese family but in a Western environment.  For the first five years of my life when I basically lived with my grandmother, she would always cook tasty Chinese dishes everyday.  I was so used to eating Chinese food that I got attached to it.  But now I don't live with my grandmother any more, so I don't have as much Chinese food as I'm used to.  I usually eat Western food for lunch and dinner.  My mom also loves Chinese food too because she was raised the same way as me, so she sometimes cooks the Chinese dishes that we both enjoy.  Me and her would both prefer Chinese food over Western because it was what we grew up with.  I don't always like western food because I think that Western food is less tasty and it has less variety than Chinese food. 

If you have had Chinese and Western food a lot, which do you think you would prefer?  I wonder if I will ever change my preference.  I wonder if everyone prefers what their first food impressions are?  What do you think?

Wesley

Learning Chinese: Kung-Fu Panda

Hey, it’s Wesley. I just saw the movie “Kung-Fu Panda”. I really liked this movie because it used some facts that are common in Asia. They also used some Chinese phrases and names such as shi fu (master) and wu gui (turtle). But was strange was that they pronounced shi fu as xi fu instead. I think they should have used the proper pronunciation.  They should have also explained it a bit more so that people who don't understand Chinese can learn the proper terms. 

There were also five other main characters by the name of the furious five. They were made up of a tiger, a crane, a monkey, a viper, and a mantis. These are known as five different types of Chinese fighting styles and each one is based on a different type of strength. This movie received great reviews and I thought it was good too. It was nice to see that people made a movie involving Chinese culture.

Learning Chinese - Early Start Mandarin work

It’s Wesley again, and I played in the fifth DVD of Early Start Mandarin Chinese with Bao Bei the Panda. A while ago I filmed the close up mouth part for the DVD to help people learn how to pronounce Chinese words.  But when we were watching the rough cut, we noticed some spots that we think were crumbs that we didn’t notice during the shoot. My job was just to stand and say chinese phrases while looking at a camera as they did a close up on my mouth. My mom would say a chinese phrase and I would have to repeat it three times with a pause in between each one. It makes me feel good say these chinese phrases because it helps me keep in practice and it also helps other kids learn chinese.  Volume 5 of the series is titled Sports and Games, and should be available beginning August 11, 2008.  We teach some simple words and phrases related to several sports.  Just in time for the Beijing Olympics!  Can't wait to watch!

Learning Chinese: Checking Out the Pandas

On my last day in Washington D.C for the week, we decided to go see their famous zoo.   It was very crowded because lots of other tourists were visiting as well.  Unlike all the other zoos that I have been to, it was free.  What my family and I mostly wanted to see though was their famous Giant Panda.   For us, the panda has special meaning because of my mom's dvd business that teaches Chinese to kids.  The main character that's in the dvds is a panda puppet named Bao Bei. Early Start Mandarin DVDs

We first went onto the Asia trail because that is where we thought it would be.  Before we got to the panda exhibit, we saw some other animals like the Sloth Bear.  It was named after the sloth because it had long claws and a long nose like the sloth does and it eats bugs instead of fish.  But the zookeeper said that if there are no bugs for it to eat that it will also sometimes eat some fruit or meat.

We finally got to the Panda exhibit,  it was hard to see the panda because it was hiding behind a log in the back of his cage.  We were able to go to a lower level where there was a glass wall and you could see a close-up of the panda.  We waited a long time for the panda to come close and when it did we took several photos. There were also some tour guides there that told us about the panda and how it was a endangered animal.  We went inside a building that had another small pen with glass walls and the mother panda was inside.  It was hard to get good pictures because many other people were also crowding around trying to get to the front.  After we were done taking photos of the panda, we were hungry, so we grabbed lunch.  We started to feel a bit tired after lunch so we went back to the hotel to rest.  Our whole time at the zoo was spent looking at the Giant Panda, but it was worth it.  I thought it was interesting especially because pandas are well known in the Chinese culture.

Cultural Detectives: Trying Greek Food

Hey, it’s Wesley again.  During my week long vacation in Washington D.C, I was also able to try out many more different types of food.  There were plenty of restaurants all around our hotel and so every night we chose someplace different to eat.  When it was my mom’s turn to pick where she wanted to eat, she picked a Greek restaurant called Zorba's .  Sometimes my natural reaction to things that I have never tried before is just to say I don’t like it and that's exactly what I did.  My mom told me that I would like it and that I should always try new things.  I didn’t really know what anything was on the menu, so I just picked whatever looked best to me which was the Yero plate.  Yero ( or Gyro )is thinly sliced pieces of beef and lamb.  They served it with a yogurt sauce on top of a tortilla. 

They also had a different type of french fries that were hand chopped and cooked differently.  I was hungry when we got the food and it looked delicious.  I quickly started eating my delicious Yero sandwich.  It tasted really delicious.  The meat was a bit salty and it was juicy.  The sandwich was very messy and the tortilla started to rip because there was too much meat in it.  I ended up not being able to finish it but it was still very tasty.  All of their food was very good looking and great tasting.  I was glad that my mom showed me this new type of food and I should always try new things.  I liked it so much that we decided to eat it again later on in the week!

US Capital - Washington Monument Visit

Hi, this is Wesley.  Wednesday, June 11th was my last day of school and the next day me and my family flew to Washington DC for a week long vacation.  I spend a lot of time during the school year learning Chinese history since I attend a Chinese immersion school.  I'm glad I'm in the U.S. capitol to learn about American history.  We first flew to Denver for a 2 hour layover and finished our flight to Baltimore, Maryland 3 hours later.  It was a full flight to Baltimore and we still had to go on a train ride to Washington DC.  When we finally got there it was 3 hours ahead of San Francisco time.  It was very warm and humid outside.  We weren't used to the heat and humidity.

While we were in DC, we wanted to look at the great monuments there.  There was lots of traffic in DC so we saved time by just walking or taking the Metro (subway).  First, we went to see the Washington Monument.  It was a tall square building that had a small pyramid on the top.  You could take a short tour inside the monument but the free tickets were given out early in the morning.  My dad got up early and managed to take the Metro and run there to get in line by 7:23 am.  At 12:00 in the afternoon, we made our way back to the monument to take the tour.  There was a security guard who told us the rules inside and we had to go through a metal detector just like we did at the airport.  There was a plaque on the bottom floor that had a quote on it and a statue of George Washington.  The elevator up to the top was very fast.  The tour guide said it took approximately 70 seconds to get there.  When we reached the top, we looked out of the windows surrounding the top of the building and the view was beautiful.  You could see every other monument and museum in Washington DC and we took several photos of the view.  One level below the top were other artifacts and quotes to look at.  It took a little longer on the way down the elevator though because on the way down, you get to see the inside of the building where there are even more things to look at.  The guide said that in a couple of months, when repairs are done on the inside, they will be giving walking tours down the monument.

Wes

Learning Chinese - Trying Afghani Food

My parents just took me to restaurant specializing in food from Afghanistan.  It's called Helmand Restaurant and is located in San Francisco. It's my first time trying Afghani food, and I think I like it. I discovered I like eggplant a lot. They first brought bread to the table, served with three dipping sauces. One was a white yogurt sauce, one was a red spicy sauce, and the last one was a green minty sauce. I thought the red sauce was a bit too spicy for me, but the other two were tasty. The menu had many names I did not recognize and could not pronounce. It contained many lamb dishes. Lamb must be very common in Afghanistan. All the dishes came with rice, prepared either of two ways. I got to try both, and really liked both.

I thought the food was similar to other middle eastern foods I've had before like kebabs. And the rice and smells reminded me a bit of Indian food. Afghanistan is a country that's a bit smaller than the state of Texas. The capital is Kabul. The country is mostly mountains and desert, and the climate is very dry. The main language is Dari, and most of the population is Sunni Muslims.

Overall, I thought the Afghani restaurant was great. There definitely are other dishes I'd like to try if we go back. I liked trying a new type of food.

Wes, Culture Detectives