Do you speak English?

I once had a dear professor at Penn who had traveled extensively with her daughter while completing anthropological research as a graduate student. I remember asking her about the challenges she faced while globetrotting with a little tot in tow. She said to me "when you travel with kids, they can get you access to fascinating people, places and experiences you would never have had otherwise."

Sure enough, the encounter we had with a young Chinese girl and her family in a Hangzhou bazaar showed me how right my professor really was. China (and practically every other country in the world) is lightyears ahead of the United States in the area of second language instruction for children. See my post on my experience as a guest teacher at the foreign language middle school in Jinshan.

Chinese parents are serious about education. They recognize the benefits of multilingualism and urge their kids to take advantage of every learning opportunity. Don't believe me? Look at this Chinese mother insisting that her daughter practice English with Amira:




As you saw at the end of the clip, Amira is clearly more concerned with using the merchant's calculator to make me haggle over her toy in my broken Chinese. But I found this encounter most fascinating. Needless to say, the mother won the battle to spark conversation between her daughter and Amira. Here's how it went. How cute!