Chinese I is nearing the end of its first semester, but it still seems novel. When we all heard last year that there would be a Chinese program, there was a common reaction of interest and admitted defeat.  It was like sitting next to the smart kid in class that never talked. A common joke was, “well, we’ll be working for ‘em in ten years anyway...”  It’s both good and bad that we mentally associate a country with a language.  Heck, one of the biggest perks of learning French is being able to visit Paris. But Chinese has the fortune (good or bad) of being tied with China.  

And China is.... ominous.  It’s looming there. To a Midwestern American psyche, China seems like a giant Dragon that eats factory jobs and gives us cheap iPods.  It’s a punchline really- either for karate movies or dark humor about America’s decline. There are a lot of positive attitudes on China too, but when some of us think of China, this comes to mind.  

Ms. Sun met me with a smile though. Her first year at Ankeny, she was traveling between three buildings throughout the day and only had a short time to meet with me. I had a few scrawled questions without much direction to go in.  I knew writing about the new Chinese classes wouldn’t be difficult, but I didn’t know what direction the story had.  

Ms. Sun was unaware of my dilemma; she was too excited to notice probably. Covering her desk in almost eerily organized way were dozens of stacks of paper. Chinese characters carefully drawn by students with her corrections along the side. Lesson plans, quizzes, and translations surrounded her. She never really left her classrooms but just brought them with her.   

I asked what her students enjoyed about Chinese, not sure where I was headed. She thought for a moment.  It is different for each grade she decided. Students at Southview are so social. Not everyone is the best at writing or reading Chinese, but she loves hearing “Ni hao!” from across the cafeteria. They have a lot fun with the class.  Her next group at Northview would dive into role playing and conversation skits. They want to push what they learn to the limit and to play with it. She described her high school classes as having a “college mentality.”  They quietly and studiously work on their characters and pronunciation because it seems beautiful to them. The class sounded more like an art or theatre program than a grammar lecture.  

But what about teaching in China? How did a Chinese native end up teaching in Iowa..... WHY IOWA?!? Well, with a masters degree in Chinese literature, Ms. Sun originally taught in China, but she came to America in ‘91 because Chinese was becoming such a popular subject. Teaching in Wisconsin for a new program, she decided to come to Iowa this year.  “Teaching is my career,” she explained.  

But Chinese? I took French because it’s a great sounding language.  It has culture and history to it. French has finesse. Chinese seemed to be like the accounting class.  Sure it’ll get you a job, but who wants to take it when there’s a film class down the hall?  “Chinese culture is 5,000 years old,” Ms. Sun repeated. The first time I heard it, it was just a statistic.  But I looked at the number circled on her paper. Five thousand years old! Shakespeare, Twain, and Poe all existed in a span of less than a thousand years.  What could China have made in five thousand years?  All of the books, movies, songs, artists and celebrities possible overwhelmed me.  It took America two centuries to make Bradgelina and Hollywood. China probably did that a millenium ago and got bored.  

Chinese is so hard though. That’s all we ever hear from... well, actually I don’t know where we hear that from.  But for some reason we all KNOW that it’s true. So I asked her, “What do you try to teach them in Chinese I?”  This will surely trip her up. All those characters to learn, the different sounds and sentence forms.  It’s got to be like boot camp. “We try to increase immersion... more culture so that they can speak with native Chinese like me,” she answered. Class has three main parts each day. Listening to native Chinese speakers, speaking Chinese in normal situations, and learning basic writing skills. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, we don’t even do that much in English classes and reading Huckleberry Finn is harder than Chinese. And after talking to some students that actually take Chinese, it sounds easier than French and Spanish in some ways.  There are no gender agreements, adjective changes, or even verb conjugations.  

It gets better though. Each Friday the students take a short quiz just over how to write a couple words they learned that week.  And it’s pretty effective at helping students remember the words; it becomes part of their daily habits to think about things in Chinese.  The rest of Friday’s class goes towards watching a short film to show what native conversations look like.  

Why didn’t I take Chinese this year? I was too afraid. I was good at other classes and didn’t want to challenge myself my senior year. But Ms. Sun almost dared me to take Chinese in college. “Students in China are very respectful... but they are less involved,” she explained, “American students are more active here.  I don’t stand up there with no one answering questions.” She probably could have guessed that American kids were more rowdy before she came here.  But she came anyway because it was a new experience. It was growth; it was a challenge. And that’s how all of her classes see it as. Southview sees a new way to make friends and talk, Northview found a new game and way to push themselves and my classmates discovered a passion.  

China and America aren’t at odds. We’re growing up together. The class will become a normal part of the school, and meeting people who speak Chinese (as much as anyone “speaks” a language after taking it in high school) will be as normal as having that friend that remembers enough Spanish to order your food. But we’re together now, and it only makes sense to learn how to talk with one another so that we can at least say “ni hao” and “zai jian.”