Some Ga. Schools Make Mandarin Mandatory by Adam Ragusea


Public schools in Macon, Ga., and surrounding Bibb County have a lot of problems. Most of the 25,000 students are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced lunch, and about half don't graduate.

Bibb County's Haitian-born superintendent Romain Dallemand came into the job last year with a bag of changes he calls "The Macon Miracle." There are now longer schools days, year-round instruction, and one mandate nobody saw coming: Mandarin Chinese for every student, pre-K through 12th grade.

"Students who are in elementary school today, by 2050 they'll be at the pinnacle of their career," Dallemand says. "They will live in a world where China and India will have 50 percent of the world GDP. They will live in a world where, if they cannot function successfully in the Asian culture, they will pay a heavy price."

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Why Brokers Study Chinese   Sept. 7, 2012

....... While other major foreign buying groups in New York — the Brazilians, the Russians and other Europeans — all require some cultural understanding for brokers to be successful, no group has posed more of a challenge than the Chinese, brokers say.

The old way of doing business is no longer enough, Ms. Field said. “We as Americans always expected anyone to adapt to our business style, and they did,” she said. “That is no longer true with the Chinese. There are too many of them, they have too much power. We truly must adapt to their style of business in order to do deals.” ....Read more

I found this article very interesting.
Smoothing the Path From Foreign Lips to American Ears  NYTimes

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Published: August 28, 2012
ATHENS, Ohio — For hundreds of grown men and women here, work can mean sticking fingers into models of the human mouth, or trying to talk while peering at their tongues in mirrors or while hopping up and down stairs....(read more)

The life-sized terracotta warriors of China are known throughout the world. This clay army of 8,000 including infantry, archers, generals and cavalry was discovered by archaeologists in 1974 after farmers digging a well near the Chinese city of Xian unearthed pieces of clay sculpted in human form.

An amazing archaeological find, the terracotta warriors date back more than two thousand years. But what was the purpose of this army of clay soldiers? Who ordered its construction? How were they created? Secrets of the Dead investigates the story behind China’s Terracotta Warriors and documents their return to former glory for the first time.

NYTimes 5/20/2012

Dissident From China Arrives in U.S., Ending an Ordeal
Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate who recently sought refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing, arrived in the heart of Greenwich Village on Saturday, holding the kind of open-air news conference that he could have never imagined while under virtual house arrest in China.(follow link to read entire article)