The Name's Sake

Watched the morning news at KTLA this morning, and found out the most popular names of 2007 (per Social Security Administration):

BOYS:

1. Jacob
2. Michael
3. Ethan
4. Joshua
5. Daniel

GIRLS:

1. Emily
2. Isabella
3. Emma
4. Ava
5. Madison

Mmm... Not surprisingly, there are 3 out of the 10 most popular names in my husband's family!

The baby name expert in the show said that if a girl's name is ended in an 'a' sound makes the name sound more powerful. Hence the bella, ma, and va. Also, girls' names tend to be more romantic and old-fashioned these days. Of course the pop culture has another influence on the baby-naming business too.

The interesting thing is, many popular American names in the 70's have fallen out of the top 100 list. Therefore, when we were in high school in the 80's, those cheerleader types of names, such as: Jennifer, Julie, Stephanie or Megan, were not used to name baby girls in the new millennium any more...

This also reminds me my "Critical Thinking" class back in college. That summer in 2003, when I found out there were 7 "Jen, Jenny, and Jennifer" out of 35 students in that Philosophy class (thanks to my last name... it's on the very end of the alphabet chart that gives me the chance to hear everyone's name before the professor called my name), I decided it right away to change my American name back to my Chinese name. Ever since that smart decision, I hardly hear anyone has the same name like mine (though it usually takes a while to let people remember my name if they weren't told a story associated with it...).

So...Guess what my previous American name is? Haha.

Mao's Kitchen on Melrose

My husband and I went to a Chinese restaurant on Melrose after we watched the latest Indiana Jones' movie in Hollywood on Memorial Day.

The restaurant is called "Mao's Kitchen", apparently is in honor of the evil former Chinese communist chairman "Mao". The whole decoration is pretty 50'~60's Chinese communist theme. It feels pretty interesting to me.

The food is pretty tasty and authentic. However, I got very bad rashes after eating that fantastic pineapple fried rice... I guess it's the shrimps and fried cashew in it...

China's One-Child Policy

After reading all those sad, shocking or touching "earthquake" stories happened during the past few days in SiChuang province, China, I had a very weird and pretty sci-fi nightmare last night.

Skip my spooky earthquake-related dream, I shed tears when I watched the TV news, and saw those heart-breaking parents cried and howled when they witnessed their dead kid being dragged out of the debris of the collapsed school buildings. I tried to explain to my step-mom-in-law that this is the biggest tragedy for those parents, because most of the parents only had one child under China's One-Child Policy established in 1979.

I personal had a few chances to deal with those mainland Chinese "only child" back in college. Unfortunately, I couldn't really get along with them. One common traits among those only child is-- self-eccentric-- which is also criticized by many social observers.

One girl A, who's like the 1st generation of the One-Child policy (the first generation should be 29 years old now, so she should be about 22, 23 then in 2002), never showed up in the meeting for our group projects or always called in sick after the meeting started. She always made all kinds of silly excuses for her absence (e.g. my boyfriend's mom is in town...). And the funny thing is, A is actually the first person who told me that she's going to attend a Chinese graduate program for an "easy" master degree. For that, I despise Chinese people who is going to get a master degree in Chinese using their native-speaking advantage for a while (that was way back to the year 2002, before Chinese is getting really hot).

Another boy, X, about 18 or 19 in 2005, came to the U.S. for college, had lived with me under the same roof for a few months (thank G-O-D, only a few months...). During those months, X never cleaned the bathroom or kitchen we shared, always left a mess (let me just mention a bit about the stinky yellow stains on the toilet seat.... not to mention he'd never had the slightest idea that he should lift the toilet seat when he has to share a toilet with a girl). I guess those "little emperors" (one of the popular nicknames for the "only-boy" in China) never learned how to share things with other people.

X would also shout (or chant? I never got it...) every morning during his morning routines: doing exercises (that's good for him, if he didn't mean to jump up and down for the last few forms of his exercises...), shouting some words out of his chest to wake himself up (and also wake the whole house and neighborhood), and running up and down the stairs in a 80-year-old wooden constructed house...

Another example: X never properly knocked on my door after he found out I used to be an ESL teacher. He felt so lucky that he got to ask me questions regarding English anytime. Yep, I meant, any-time to him.

I actually had to post the rules on my bedroom door after he totally disturbed my daily life.

Anyway, I might be just in bad luck to meet the wrong Chinese "only-child"s. Only child in general does has some unique traits compared to the child has siblings. However, when the whole society and the whole country is going for the only child, they were, are, and will be spoiled in a way, or two.

Boba or Pearl Tea?

Checked a new lesson on Chinese Pod today regarding "Pearl Tea".

I enjoyed reading all those comments, and mostly agreed with what "elee8888cn" said there that "Pearl Tea was originally invented in Taiwan in 1983 and has became one of the most famous branches of the Bubble Tea. It was later introduced to Chinese and US market by a couple of Taiwanese owned cafes..." .

However, since Pearl Tea was invented by Mr.Liu(2) Han(4)jie(4) 刘汉介 in my hometown, Tai (2) Zhong(1) 台中(the biggest city in central Taiwan), and I had had at least 5 tons of all kinds of pearl tea from mid 80's to 2002 (I moved to the U.S. in 2002), I think I have to add a little bit history to the commonly called "Boba" tea (it refers to the bigger sized bubbles added in the tea).

The original meaning of 波霸 Bo(1) ba(4)，is quite a condescending nickname for women who have HUGE breasts.

• The word "波 bo(1)" means "tits" or "boobs" in Cantonese (since it's a nickname from Hong Kong, and Cantonese is the main dialect in Hong Kong area).
• The 2nd word "霸 ba(4)" means huge or gigantic.
• Hence "波霸“ actually means "HUGH BOOBS" in Cantonese (now you know why I said it's a condescending word for females).
  

Why it's from Hong Kong? Why huge boobs?

In the late 80's, there was a very famous actress in Hong Kong named "葉子媚 ye(4) zi(3) mei(4)", who was famous mostly because of her 36F cup sized breasts. As you may know, for most Asian women, they tend to have flatter breasts. So, when this Hongkong-nese "Pamela Anderson" type of actress showed up in media, people soon gave her a nickname "波霸“ to compliment on her breasts (sure, there were also all kinds of rumors said that she'd done some plastic surgery to make them that big, but, hey, it was last 80's... and we're not going to discuss this here).

Anyway, after the "Pearl Tea" was so popular in Taiwan for a few years, people seemed to get tired of it. Therefore, one bartender at a tea house in 台南 tai(2) nan(2) (a big city in southern Taiwan) was "inspired" by that actress' popularity, and made some special orders of multi-layered "pearl", "bubble","tapioca" (which-ever you'd like to call it), and sold it with the also super-sized straw (so you can suck the bubbles up smoothly), tried to make this special tea drink a new life.

BOOM! Big success!

Then the name "Boba" tea spreaded around the world; people enjoy drinking it without knowing it's actually named after an actress with speical talents.

More info on this actress (or if you want to see what she look like), check this link on Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Yip

I personally prefer "Pearl Tea 珍珠奶茶“ though. It is just more elegantly original. I'm so proud of Pearl Tea. Not only it's invented in my hometown, but it has become one of my best dishes when it comes to party time!

Radicals 部首 bu(4)shou(3)

When I was teaching ESL, I discovered a very common and fundamental problem among many ESL learners--spelling & pronunciations；many ESL learners don't have the concept of "phonics" and "spelling rules" in American English. Either no teachers had ever taught them these concepts, or the teachers tried to (and had to) finish all 45 "K.K. spelling symbols" within one week right after the English beginners just being taught 26 alphabets (or phonics).

The result? Big confusion! The ESL learners would never get to spell a word properly when they hear it, or pronounce a word when they see it.

How about in Mandarin Chinese learning? "Pin-Yin" spelling rules and the concept of "radicals" are the basic tools for any CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language)learners to acquire Chinese characters.

However, when my cousin T asked me to tutor her for her advanced Chinese homework in college the other day, I was surprised to learn that she doesn't have some basic concepts of radicals even after learning Mandarin for 3 years (and she just returned from China after being an exchanged student there for 1 year, not mention using the radicals to look up a word in the dictionary). Cousin T was totally surprised to know that there are actually some easy and fun ways to remember characters!

Anyways, if you're going to teach or learn Mandarin, I highly recommend you to teach/learn the 214 radicals (yeah, I know it sounds a lot... but it definitely helps! Learn at least 50 of them) right from the beginning. What I like to do is, when I start teaching the initials (consonants in English) of Pin-Yin, I'll use the radicals as the example words for these sounds (or you can use words that are going to show up in the first 3 lessons as examples):

• t: 土 tu(3) earth, soil, ground, dirt.

土tu(3) is the radical for "在" (preposition: in, on, at) ,"地"(ground), "坐"(to sit) that students are going to learn soon in the beginning level.

• r: 人ren(2) a person.

人ren(2) is the radical for "你"（you)，"他"(male he/him/his)，"休" (to rest)， which all contains some "human" actions.

• k: 口 kou(3) mouth, opening, sounding

口(3) is the radical for “呢”"吗“(both question markers), "吃”(eat)

Or you can simply google "Chinese radicals", you can find all the info you need.

One interesting thing happened in my tutoring class yesterday. When my student P was learning a new word "消炎药" in the "Going to a Doctor" lesson, after he saw the pin-yin, he first pronounced the word correctly, then I asked him not to peek at the English meaning, tried to make a wild guess first.

He located the first character with a vertial "water" radical on the left, the 2nd character with 2 "fire" radicals, then the 3rd character has a "herbal, grass,plant" radical on the top... So, he guessed this must be some kind of "antibiotics", because it looks like some sort of "herbs" you can use as the "water" to put out 2 big "fire" in your body?

Bingo!

The beauty of radicals...

It might seem hideously slow at the beginning when you try to incorporate radicals into teaching each word (sure I'll skip some tricky words without even mention their radicals in the beginning level). Well, just like any English speakers who want to achieve a higher level of proficiency or enter the "spelling bee" contests, you have to take Latin lessons to learn all those prefix, suffix and etymology; so does in learning Chinese.

How I got the job?

My friend G and Cousin L were asking me the other day:

• "How did you find this job?"

I found the job through a job agency "Carney, Sandoe & Associates" http://www.carneysandoe.com/. It's a agency based in Boston. But they place the teachers everywhere in the U.S. Free of charge for candidates. The agency charged the schools who are looking for teachers.

You can also use "Cal/West Educators Placement". It's another agency based in the L.A. area. They place teachers mainly in California and west coast. But they do charge the applicants $ 35 for application fees (one time, life long).

Both agencies are pretty capable of finding suitable positions for you. The first thing you have to do is to fill out all the application forms on line. If you're qualified (the basic is a B.A. degree), they will contact you for a phone (or in person) interview, then send you all the info you need to know for your job searching.

• "What's the process of getting a job in a U.S. private school?"

For my example, I started my job searching from last October. After I've done my phone interview with Carney Sandoe, they sent me 3-5 F/T or P/T Mandarin Chinese teaching openings in different schools last December. I did the follow up e-mails (or mails, depends on what the school prefers), and started my interviews and teaching demos process with different schools in February and March. I did my last interview and teaching demo with my current school in the end of April. A week later, they offered me a job that will be starting in August.

So, you get the picture. The whole process took me about 6-10 months to land a job. But, you're going to change or find a job at any private school, you can just start from January or February. That will give you enough time to do so.

• "If I want to teach Mandarin Chinese in the States, what qualifications do I need?"

You do need a California teaching credential, and a B.A. to prove that you are qualified to be a CFL teacher in the States.

Please see the links for more details:
--Teaching in public school system in California: http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/teach.html
--駐洛杉磯台北經濟文化辦事處文化組 http://www.tw.org/cbest/faq.htm
--Teaching in private school system in California: http://www.calwesteducators.com/

But, for my case, I don't have a California teaching credential. Some privates school do request the teachers have credentials, some don't. I was lucky that my school didn't request one, I guess they emphasize more on teaching experiences and skills.

• When you look for a part-time or full-time job as a Chinese teacher, how do you convince others that you are able to teach Chinese not only because you're from Taiwan but your native language is Chinese?

Sigh... This is a very good question, and it will be a long story to tell... Very sadly, there are still many prejudices against "Taiwanese" Chinese in this field. Anyway, please check my old blog entry: http://ctinlalaland.blogspot.com/2008/02/beverly-hill-lingual-institute.html. You will understand what I meant.

However, I think the most important thing is, you must have pretty good knowledge of the Chinese language itself if you want to be a capable Chinese teacher (of course along with other criteria, such as: effective pedagogy tailored to students' needs, tremendous patience & humor, and cultural sensitivity).

I started to learn a lot of things regarding "Chinese" on my own after I begun tutoring English speakers. Many things we have never learned from our Chinese teachers at school when we grew up, many things we never understood why and how... I found the answers on my own by reading a lot of related materials. I guess the reason why no teachers would ever tell you the answers because it was considered "rebellious" to even think about challenging teachers by asking "tricky" questions (another Confucius influence!).

Carrying the "Taiwanese" Chinese accent seems to me a very minor thing from the linguistic perspective. If you ask any native English speakers, how many of them will dare to admit that their spoken English is the proper "American" English and their accents are "standard"?

Cure for Eczema?

One of my tutoring student D is visiting her sister in Taiwan these days (her sister is currently learning Mandarin in Taipei). Got an e-mail from her today asking me if I can tell her where my Chinese doctor's clinic is because her sister is suffering from very bad eczema and allergies.

As a veteran of having eczema and all kinds of allergies forEVER and had lived in Taiwan for over 30 years, I gave some suggestions for her sister:

• Find a TCM (traditional Chinese medical) doctor that is close or convenient to her (or covered by her student's insurance), so she can pay frequent visits whenever the symptoms get worse.

If you go to the western dermatologist, you will get the ointment, take some drugs to suppress the symptoms (or give you a shot of cortisone if the symptoms are really bad). Then you can only prey for a delay of the next burst sometime again. However, in TCM theory, eczema or many kinds of allergies are the results of the dampness in the spleen, ill digestion in the stomach, excessive heat in the liver and hence the depletion of liver energy.

Therefore, to possibly "cure" eczema (There's no way to cure eczema with today's medical technology. You can ask for living with eczema peacefully, and it only comes visiting your from time to time), the TCM use the herbs, acupressure and acupuncture, or moxibustion to enhance the funtions and circulations in certain organs, and therefore remove the stagnation/dampness/excessive heat of relative areas, and more effectively relieve your symptoms.

If we use "an overheated kitchen stove on a very damp tile floor" to be the analogy of eczema, let's compare how the western and Chinese way of dealing with the issues in the kitchen (our body).

• Western dermatologist: first of all, the doctor might splash some cold water or throw some ice(drugs or shots) on the stove to cool down the hot kitchen (so the kitchen will be cooled down right away). Then the doctor lay some paper towels on the damp floor (the ointment), so the cook (our skin) won't fall on the slippery floor. Then, the cook can still perform what he/she supposes to do in a short term.

And when the kitchen is soon over-heated again, the doctor might tell the cook to turn on a fan or air-conditioning(depends on how rich you are) to control the possible up-coming hazard...

• TMC doctor: first the doctor try to locate the origin of the hazard. If it's the broken knob on the switch, turn the switch down a bit to low fire, so the surface and back splash behind the stove (the breakouts and rashes in our skin) will gradually cool down. Then the doctor tries to find some rag to slowly absorb the dampness on the floor, so no one will fall on it again. However, the whole process will take a while (depends on how damp and over-heated this kitchen is).

I'll write more about other "cures" some other time. Go to run some errands now.

The importance of REVIEW

Like we'll check the pantry and fridge before we do grocery shopping, or you check your wardrobe before you do your seasonal shopping (being a must-be-organized person, I do that all the time), it is important to take a break, pause, and review whatever you've learned from time to time when it comes to learning Chinese characters.

After I told my tutoring students that I'll be no longer tutoring them from next month, they accepted it pretty well (sure, they're adults!) and asked me to keep in touch with them. Student D is going to travel in Taiwan and China, and she promised me to submit the "special assignment" I gave her after her return. Student P is going to travel to France and Japan, so it's a actually a good timing for him to stop the lessons for a while. So, I feel less guilty to "abandon" them, according to P.

Anyway, for both of them, I gave them a big assignment: re-organize all the vocabulary they've learned so far, and compile a chart of them. I ask D, who has just learned Mandarin for about 36 hours (over the during of 6 months), to turn in a list of at least 50 vocabulary. For P, he's more on the edge of a beginner and intermediate level now, so I asked him to give me a list of at least 500 vocabulary.

By listing the words by a few different categories: Subject, Verbs, Nouns, then Adjectives, Adverbs, Phrases... The students (even for the teacher) get to know what they've remembered in their brains, and what they have given back to the teacher. And then they can focus on what they've been missing, and strengthening the grammar concepts by putting the words in the right order to create their own sentences.

Mocha V.S. Latte

Interesting clip on Tudou.com (equivalent to youtube.com in the U.S.).

Even though you don't know Chinese very well, it's fun to watch that cute little cat trying to fight the dog, and get some place of its own...

A Teacher's Biggest Fulfillment

I hardly check my old Taiwanese yahoo e-mail account anymore; but don't know why, I decided to check it today, and surprisingly found out a mail from my former student J among hundreds of junk mails...

I was overjoyed to hear from her again. After all, it was the most wonderful feeling a teacher could have to have a student remembers you and contacts you, even after 6 years apart.

Here's what she said in the mail (in purple text, no editing at all, just delete her full name):

Dear Minnie, (yeah, don't laugh, that was the old English name I used when I was teaching ESL for kids. Why Minnie? Remember who's Micky Mouse's girlfriend? Minnie! Kids dig that!)

I havn't kept in touch with you for a long time. Do you still remember me?

I have been really busy during the past three years in senior high school. Luckily, now I get admitted to the department of foreign languages and literature in National Cheng Kung University, which is located in Tainan and is famous for its outstanding college in science and engineer.

As the matter of fact, I'd like to be an hotelier in the future. However, there isn't any department about hotel management in prestigious universities in Taiwan. As a result, one of the reasons why I want to study foreign languages is that I want to study hotel management abroad in the future and bilingual ability is important to a hotlier.

What do you think about my idea? Is it "correct"? Could you give any advice? I wonder that it is correct for me to major foreign languages just because I want to be an hotelier.

Sincerely Yours
J 5/3/08

Sure I replied her right away with absolute delight and some advice she wants.
Life is all good.

Textbook--Huanying 欢迎 (Welcome!)

A few reasons why I chose to use 'Huangying" to be the textbook for the next school year (I'm NOT working for the publisher, just simply express why I like this book):

1. It's full-color printed!! Who wouldn't love colors? Compare to most textbooks that are only black & white, this textbook is like carnival!



2. It puts traditional & simplified characters side by side in the vocabulary chart. That will be a great comparison for students to understand the origins of many characters. We have to admit that many simplified characters has lost its beauty and the meaning of its original forms.



3. It is designed for the middle/high school students specifically in North America. In other words, the content is more engaging to students' daily life (than IC is more related to college life). I'm happy to find out that in the unit for exchanging personal info, they don't talk about address anymore. Indeed, we hardly give away our "physical" address to a new friend. Instead, we exchange e-mail address; that's more practical and easier to comprehend for young students (And of course, telling address in Chinese is difficult also... Just think about all the translations from English to Chinese, and the totally reverse word order...).



4. It adds a lot of cultural facts, stories, beautiful pictures of food for the learners. Even I will want to read these interesting stuff first when I open the book.



5. It has a small column of "classroom language" in the end of each unit. Which is easier for the teacher to gradually encourage students using more Chinese in class.

I've received the on-line sample copy of Volume 1, Part 1, Unite 1 from the publisher. And that's what I've observed so far. My supervisor has already orders the books last week. Hopefully I can get the teacher's book copy before the new semester begins. I heard them not only provide class activity ideas, but even the quiz/test templates in the teacher's book... Can't wait to read it!!

Textbooks

I sent out a WISH LIST to my supervisor after talking to her last Wednesday:

Chinese Textbooks for 08-09

• Intro of Chinese -- 6th Grade
  
  Ni Hao : Revised Simplified Edition, Volume 1 - With CD
  Author: Shumang / Fredlein, Paul
  Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Co.


• Chinese A--7th Grade
  Huanying, Volume 1 –Full year Textbook (paperback) + free audio downloads
  Author: Jiaying Howard, Lanting Xu
  Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Co. $59.95
  Workbook: Huanying, Volume 1, Part 1 $19.95


• Chinese 1 -- 9th & 11th Grade
  Huanying, Volume 1 -part 1+2, Textbook (paperback) + free audio downloads
  Author: Jiaying Howard, Lanting Xu
  Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Co. $59.95
  Huanying, Volume 1, Part 1 –Workbook $19.95
  

I also requested the ordering of 2 Teacher’s Books, price TBA.

By the way, I recommended the students to do some light reading as a supplementary material:
Title: China: Empire of Living Symbols (Paperback)
Author: Cecilia Lindqvist
Edition: 08
Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 5, 2008)
Price: $25.00

You can easily get the paperback copy form amazon.com now. I just got my paperback copy 3 days ago (the hardcover one is like $100, very expensive), and love it!! The chair said we probably can get a few, and put it in our library for students' reference.