Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.
 

Michelle Obama Promotes Free Speech in China

BEIJING — U.S. first lady Michelle Obama visited Peking University Saturday on her whirlwind tour through China.

On her second day in China, first lady Michelle Obama spoke to American and Chinese students at the country’s prestigious Peking University. She emphasized the importance of education and human rights - including the right to free speech.

“Time and again we have seen that countries are stronger and more prosperous when the voices and opinions of all their citizens can be heard,” he said.

Hillary Clinton’s criticism of China was much more direct when she visited as first lady. Mrs. Obama’s trip will steer clear of sensitive political issues, and she will not grant interviews to journalists. Instead, her aides say her time in China will be an exercise in soft diplomacy and in people-to-people connections.

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, her mother Marian Robinson (L), share a light moment with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and his wife Peng Liyuan (R) after a photograph session at the Diaoyutai State guest house in Beijing, March 21, 2014.

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U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, her mother Marian Robinson (L), share a light moment with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and his wife Peng Liyuan (R) after a photograph session at the Diaoyutai State guest house in Beijing, March 21, 2014.

On Friday, Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan accompanied Mrs. Obama and her two daughters to a Chinese school where they took a calligraphy class and played a game of ping pong. The two first ladies also toured the Forbidden City.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also greeted Mrs. Obama Friday night, and said he was looking forward to seeing President Barack Obama during an upcoming trip to the Netherlands.

Mrs. Obama is using the Beijing portion of her trip to China to emphasize the importance of education and studying abroad.

“Study abroad isn’t just a fun way to spend a semester. It is quickly becoming the key to success in our global economy,” she said.

Two hundred thousand Chinese students study in the United States, and 20,000 Americans study in China every year.

Before her visit to China, Mrs. Obama wrote in a blog post, “I’ll be talking with students about their lives in China and telling them about America and the values and traditions we hold dear.”

Mrs. Obama will next travel to Xi’an to see the terra cotta warriors and to Chengdu to tour the Chengdu Panda Base, which has about 50 pandas.

 Read More: http://www.voanews.com/content/us-first-lady-promotes-freedoms-in-china/1876864.html

Michelle Obama tells Chinese students internet freedom is a universal right

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. first lady Michelle Obama told an audience of college students in the Chinese capital on Saturday that open access to information - especially online - is a universal right.

But Obama stopped short of calling on China to offer its citizens greater freedoms on a visit in which she is expected to steer clear of more complicated political issues, but rather try to build goodwill through soft diplomacy.

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"It is so important for information and ideas to flow freely over the internet and through the media," Obama said told an audience of about 200 U.S. and Chinese students at Beijing's prestigious Peking University.

"My husband and I are on the receiving end of plenty of questioning and criticism from our media and our fellow citizens, and it's not always easy," she added. "But I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world."

Censorship in Chinese news media and online is widespread, and internet users in the country cannot access information about many controversial topics without special software to circumvent restrictions.

The United States frequently criticizes China's human rights record, including its lack of protection of freedom of speech.

Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer, is focusing on promoting education and cultural ties during the week-long trip, and will also visit the Great Wall, the historic city of Xi'an, and the southern city of Chengdu along with her mother and two daughters.

Former U.S. first ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton both criticized other countries' human rights records on trips abroad while their husbands were in office.

U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus also touched on internet freedom on Saturday in remarks to the students before Obama's speech.

"Between texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat we're all interconnected," he said, describing how technology enables better communication between cultures.

Twitter and Facebook are both blocked in China.

(Reporting By Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-china-usa-obama-20140320,0,5787912.story

In Beijing, Michelle Obama reprises pingpong diplomacy

(CNN) -- More than 40 years after pingpong diplomacy led to a thaw in Sino-American relations, it was on display again -- in rudimentary form -- as Michelle Obama visited a Beijing high school during her family's first full day of a visit to China.

At about 9:30 a.m., Obama -- accompanied by her daughters, Malia and Sasha, and her mother, Marian Robinson -- stepped from a black SUV onto a red carpet leading from the street to the entrance of Beijing Normal School, where they were greeted by China's first lady, Peng Liyuan, and ushered inside for a tour.

Michelle Obama is on an official visit to expand relations between the United States and China.

"Warmly Welcome to Our School," read a sign on the digital aboard in front of the complex.

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A stop in a robotics lab included a look at a station holding a metal, snowflake-shaped, remote-controlled robot. "It can go over obstacles," a student said, demonstrating as it moved along a white strip over cardboard and plastic yellow bricks.

'Bad Boy' robot 'is really naughty'

When the robot got stuck, its student operator said something to the effect that it was nervous. "Don't be nervous," Obama said. "It's pretty impressive," she added as the robot was operating.

At another station, a young man showed Obama "Bad Boy," so named because the robot "is really naughty," he said, according to a pool reporter.

Obama agreed to try it, but could not get the remote control to work and handed it to Malia, who had better luck.

The first lady spoke with a number of students, asking a 16-year-old what she wanted to do after high school. "I want to turn mathematics into reality," the student answered.

When they arrived at a pingpong practice room containing six tables, an instructor asked Obama if she wanted to try her hand at it, and she quickly assumed the role of student.

"All right, wait," she said, taking off her vest. "How do I hold the paddle properly?"

"This is the angle," the instructor responded, holding it vertically.

"OK, we're going to get this," Obama said. "Let's go."

Armed with a paddle, she volleyed for about five minutes -- first with the instructor, then with a young woman, as students looked on. "Nice," she said occasionally after her opponent returned her shot.

But Obama acknowledged that she had little experience with the game. "My husband plays," she said. "He thinks he's better than he really is. I could stay here all day."

1971 pingpong match proved key

The 50-year-old first lady was in grade school when a chance meeting by a Chinese pingpong player with a U.S. player led to Beijing's decision to invite the American table tennis team for an exhibition match in 1971.

That match laid the groundwork for the visit of U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972 and paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1979, ending China's isolation from the outside world.

As the members of the first family departed the school, 33 American exchange students -- one of them from Sidwell Friends, the Washington school attended by Malia -- lined up in front of the red carpet and across from their Chinese counterparts to shake hands with the family before they left for their next stop, the Forbidden City.

Michelle Obama's schedule does not include a news conference, and she is not expected to answer questions from professional reporters during the trip. But on Saturday, she is planning to answer several of the more than 300 questions filed by CNN iReporters about studying abroad and international travel.

And on Tuesday, she will answer questions submitted by U.S. classrooms as part of a webinar series by Discovery Education and the White House.

The three generations of girls and women flew from Washington on Wednesday for what is to be a weeklong trip to three Chinese cities, where Obama is expected to speak with children at schools about education and youth empowerment.

Official: U.S.-China relationship is 'between peoples'

"Her visit and her agenda sends a message that the relationship between the United States and China is not just between leaders, it's a relationship between peoples," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.

"That's critically important, given the roles that our two countries are going to play in the 21st century, that we maintain the very regular contacts that we have at the leader-to-leader level, but that we're also reaching out and building relationships with people, particularly young people."

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at next week's Nuclear Security Summit at The Hague, Netherlands.

White House officials told reporters this week that the two leaders will discuss issues on which the United States and China differ, such as human rights and trade.

"We don't expect the people of China to agree with all of our policy positions at any given moment, but the more they understand the United States -- the more they understand the President and the first lady and their values and their priorities -- we think the better it is for both of our countries," Rhodes added.

China is the fifth most popular country for U.S. students studying abroad, and more students from China study in the United States than from any other country.

Read more:  http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/21/politics/michelle-obama-china/

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.
 

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.
 

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

 

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Peking opera is one of the most unique Chinese cultural heritages. Here is a story of a Peking opera artist who keeps pursuing his dream after moving to the US

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

 

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Speak Chinese, speak success. Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of los Angeles.

Beautiful China! Travel to China? Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy of Los Angeles.

Beautiful China in Winter. Travel to China? Learn Chinese at Chinese Language Academy

FREE two hour Mandarin Crash Course on March 9th

Have you ever thought about learning Chinese? Join us on Sunday March 9th for a FREE two hour Mandarin Crash Course Intro Session in Culver City! Limited to a class size of 25 attendees.

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To Play The Part, Actors Must Talk The Talk — In Chinese

The success of the Netflix series House of Cards lies in the details.
The show has consulted with computer hackers and political scientists on storylines. Its characters regularly name-drop real-life political journalists, some of whom make on-screen cameos.
And a few episodes feature actors speaking in Chinese. That's one detail, though, the show doesn't get quite right.
My fellow binge watchers may remember the character Raymond Tusk speaking in heavily accented Mandarin Chinese during business calls in the show's first season. You wouldn't expect an American billionaire from St. Louis to be a fluent Chinese speaker.
But in the show's second season, there are a few roles that would call for actors to perform in Chinese fluently. So I called an expert – one of my Chinese language instructors in college, Kirsten Speidel, who was born in Taiwan and first learned Mandarin Chinese as a child. Now she teaches Chinese to students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
"Because I'm correcting people's pronunciation daily in class, I'm pretty critical when I hear Chinese in American movies [and TV shows]," she said.
Speidel hasn't seen the show yet, so I played her an audio clip of a businessman from China telling one of his staff members to bring over a spoon in Mandarin.
Her verdict?
"Not a very good accent," she said. "[It] could be that he knows some Mandarin, but [it's] not very good pronunciation of each word."
But she praised another clip of a Mandarin translator speaking on the phone as "much more fluid and fluent."
The Details Of Language
If you think we're nitpicking, you're right.
But that only seems fair given that the show is obsessed with authenticity ("from the macro to the micro," the show's executive producer Beau Willimon recently told TV Guide).
Staff writer Kenneth Lin wrote the Mandarin dialogue for the show's Chinese characters.
"Obviously we're always trying to get as close to accurate as we can get," he says. "Whether or not [the characters] sound like, you know, natives of Beijing or not is certainly questionable, but you know, if you go to China, people have a lot of different accents."
In American TV shows and movies, characters from China are often played by actors of Asian descent who are not fluent Chinese speakers.
"The assumption is that nobody will notice or care," says film producer Janet Yang has worked for decades on films in both China and Hollywood, including The Joy Luck Club and a Chinese remake of High School Musical. "As it is, [some] people can't really distinguish between Chinese and Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese and any Asian, so Asians tend to get lumped together."
In 2005, Chinese-American actor Robert Chan filmed a small role as a mob boss from mainland China in Martin Scorsese's The Departed. You may have heard him yelling in Cantonese at Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello. Chan, who grew up speaking Cantonese, says the role was originally written to speak in Mandarin.
"But I said, 'I'm sorry! My Mandarin is even worse than my Cantonese!' " he recalls. "So they ran my Mandarin by some people who actually speak [Mandarin] Chinese, and they said, 'That's really bad! Go with his Cantonese!' I guess it's not factually correct, but then, you know, that's movies. You suspend reality."
Acting 'In Chinese'
Yang says the reality facing Hollywood portrayals of Chinese characters is shifting.
"[Hollywood has] been, for the longest time, catering first to American audiences, and then the rest of the world just sort of gobbled up everything that was being made [in Hollywood]," she says.
But today there's more entertainment that's designed to work in both America and China. (See Iron Man 3 and Looper for recent examples.)
That means more demand for dialect coaches like Doug Honorof, who helps actors pull off the illusion of speaking Chinese fluently. The trick, Honorof says, isn't actually learning the language.
"It's really more about the physical part of it – what you do with your tongue, your lips and your jaw," he explains. "You try to make it appear that you actually can speak [the language] even though you really can't."
Still, Honorof says the level of authenticity depends in part on what the director wants.
"Sometimes they just want the mouth to move. For broad comedy, they're really not thinking about the authenticity so much," he says.
But some of Honorof's assignments involve days of extensive exercises with an actor with the end goal of not just sounding "Chinese."
"They have to be able to act in Chinese. You have to actually be able to own it so much that you can actually then just perform," he explains.
The Asian-American Actor's 'Toolkit'
Hollywood roles for actors of Asian descent are still mostly limited to immigrant or foreign characters.
For better or worse, Steven Eng, an actor who teaches voice and speech classes at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, says the ability to speak in foreign languages or accented English is "an essential part of the actor toolkit" particularly for Asian-American actors.
"We are constantly going in for roles that are characters from foreign countries, so it's necessary for us to not sound 'American,' regardless of the fact that we were born and raised in the U.S." explains Eng, who says he emphasizes to his students the importance of specificity when developing an accent.
For actor Andy Yu, Chinese language skills are a byproduct of being born in Hong Kong and growing up in Canada speaking both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects – skills that he's found to be especially important to get the nod from casting directors.
"One of the reasons they hire us is because they expect us to know our language and our culture really well," says Yu, who has also worked with actors as a Chinese dialect coach. "So we have to deliver."
Lines delivered even in a slightly-off accent can ruin the illusion for audiences in the know.
But this is one detail that hasn't stopped the second season of House of Cards from gaining an audience in China. Since its debut, it's the most-watched American show on China's Netflix equivalent, Sohu.

 Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/26/283062309/to-play-the-part-actors-must-talk-the-talk-in-chinese

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Washington Post: First lady Michelle Obama and daughters to visit China this month

First lady Michelle Obama will visit China on March 19-26, with stops in Beijing, Xi’an and Chengdu on a trip that will focus on education, the White House announced Monday.
Obama will be accompanied by her daughters, Malia and Sasha, and her mother, Marian Robinson. President Obama will not be on the trip.
During her visit, the first lady will meet with Madame Peng, the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and will visit cultural and historical sites. Obama will be focusing on the power and importance of education, both in her own life and in the lives of young people in both countries," the White House said in a statement.

In preparation for the trip, Obama will visit the District's Yu Ying public charter school, which features a Mandarin-immersion program, on Tuesday. Sasha Obama has studied Mandarin at Sidwell Friends school, and she practiced some phrases with former President Hu Jintao during the former president’s state visit in 2011.
The first lady has said she sees such trips abroad as an opportunity both to act as an ambassador for the United States and to expose her daughters to the world. Her daughters receive national briefing books on the countries they visit, styled after the books prepared for the president and first lady.
During a 2011 trip to South Africa and Botswana, where Michelle Obama traveled with her daughters, mother, niece and nephew, Malia and Sasha were publicly visible in ways they rarely are in the United States. Both accompanied their mother on official visit to tourist sites in the country, read to school children and took a South African safari.
The first lady has made other trips abroad without the president, including a trip to Mexico and Haiti in 2010.

Read more:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/03/03/first-lady-michelle-obama-and-daughters-to-visit-china-this-month/

Beautiful China in Winter!
 

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Baidu Inc, China's largest Internet searchengine, will enter the film industry with a new venture in LosAngeles

Baidu Inc, China's largest Internet search engine, is planning to enter the film production sector with a newly established venture — Aquamen Entertainment, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The venture will be based in Los Angeles. The first feature from the company will be a $40 million animation feature — Kong, based on the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West but focusing on the original story of the titular character as well as involving Hollywood sci-fi elements, such as aliens and robots, the reports said.

The production also features an international collaboration as the venture will be run by South Korean filmmaker Jeong Jung Kim and Chinese producer Gary Zhang. Kong will be developed in partnership with a South Korean animation studio, while a Hollywood director will likely take the helm of the production.

Aquamen Entertainment marks Baidu's founder and Chief Executive Officer Robin Li's first foray into the film production business, after the company previously acquired iQiyi, a popular online video website.

"It's a natural move for Baidu to enter the movie production area at this moment," said Shao Gang, deputy director of consulting for the culture and entertainment industry at Horizon Research Consultancy Group in Beijing.

Meanwhile, Huang Qunfei, general manager of Beijing New Film Association Co Ltd, one of China's largest theater chains, was optimistic about the movie reception, saying that Baidu has good resources and platforms to promote its productions as well as marketing campaigns.

Read more: http://gbtimes.com/china/baidu-strides-film-industry

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