“Xiangjiao (香蕉)! Banana!” says Fu Huijuan, beaming as she waves the fruit in front of her three-year-old pupil, Leon, at a Madrid nursery school.
He and his four classmates have barely learned to speak even in their native Spanish, but already they are absorbing Mandarin Chinese — as are many adult Spaniards concerned for their job prospects.
“Xiangjiao,” Leon replies in a tiny voice, grinning as he is rewarded with a bite of banana and a sticker. “Xiexie (謝謝). Thank you.”
Photo: AFP
Fu’s class — offered free for the first month — is the newest after-hours activity for children at the TEO private nursery, whose parents hope it will pay off later in life.
Numerous schools and language centers here have started holding such lessons as Spaniards look to China’s fast-growing economy for opportunities after five years of on-off recession in Spain.
“Chinese seems to me an essential language in today’s world, and the best way to learn it is from an early age. Learning it as an adult seems much more difficult,” says Leon’s mother, Sara Vergara.
Job prospects
“It is a long-term strategy, for his job prospects in the future,” adds Vergara, a 33-year-old housewife, arriving to pick Leon up from the class. “And I think he is enjoying himself.”
Pilar Alvarez, director of TEO, said the nursery launched the after-hours Chinese lessons after seeing that many other schools in Madrid were doing so.
“After the second or third class, the kids start really getting into it,” she says. “We are considering introducing it bit by bit for all the children during normal school time.”
Regional governments in Spain are also expanding Chinese courses in their subsidized language centers, while some public schools are offering them as an after-school activity.
A program of free classes jointly funded by the Andalucia government and the Chinese state has seen enrolments nearly double since it started two years ago, to 1,200 for this school year, the regional education ministry says.
It estimates that 30,000 people are currently studying Chinese as a foreign language in Spain. No such figure was available from the national education ministry.
“China is expected to be the leading world power in a few decades,” the Andalucia ministry said in a statement. “This is driving a boom in the number of people studying its language and culture.”
Madrid’s network of official language schools has taught Chinese since the 1960s but demand has surged recently, said Maria Jose Garcia-Patron, head of secondary education and professional training in the regional education ministry.
“Demand for these lessons was stable for 40 years, with about 80 or 90 students enrolled, but over the past 10 years the number has grown markedly and has reached about 300,” she told AFP in an e-mail.
The recent crop of students in Chinese seem undeterred by its alien systems of intonation and writing that many see as challenging for Western learners.
“It is a bit hard to write, but I think it is easy to teach children to talk,” said Fu. “Children have good memories.”
Fu, 25, came to Spain six months ago and applied for the teaching job with Bambu Idiomas, a private company that organizes classes for schools and individuals of all ages.
“There are lots of opportunities in Spain. Lots of families are looking for Chinese teachers, and now lots of nurseries too,” she said.
Set up in 2011, the family-run company had 87 pupils signed up last year. This year the number surged to 235, said one of its Spanish founders, Ruben Camarero.
“It is an important language for the future,” he said. “We decided it was a language that would interest people because Spain is in an enormous economic crisis and China is drawing a lot of interest worldwide.”
In the classroom, Fu plays from her laptop the nursery rhyme known in Europe as “Frere Jacques”, sung in Mandarin in a version well-known to Chinese children.
As she repeats the names of fruit to the five toddlers, correcting their intonation, four-year-old Angela jumps around excitedly, her long brown hair whirling.
“Banana!” she yells. “Xiangjiao!”
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50