Mandarin students hope to travel to China

For the past two years, Sisters students have had the rare opportunity to learn Mandarin, the official national language of China.

Their teacher, Sisters businessman David Perkins, who lived in Taiwan for 21 years and Hong Kong for five years, is planning to take his second-year students to China.

They hope to tour China for two weeks in June after school is out. Perkins is busy creating fundraisers to help make the trip a reality. Black Butte Ranch Art Guild donated a quilt to help raise funds for the trip. The Christmas quilt is currently on display at Sisters Coffee Co. Raffle tickets may be purchased at the counter.

On December 5 there will be a holiday open house at Sisters Art Works. Among the many offerings there will be an opportunity to purchase personalized calligraphy of Chinese characters suitable for framing. Perkins wants to expose his students to the language and the culture. He wants them  to meet the Chinese people and whet their appetite for further study. While he will take them on the typical sightseeing trips to visit the Great Wall, Tian An Men Square, and the Forbidden City, he is planning much more.

"I hope to take them on a factory tour in Guangzhou where there are 6,000 workers," Perkins said. "They could see how production works on stuff that goes to America. There is also an orphanage outside the city, that can be reached by train, where they could spend time helping with the children."

Perkins hopes to immerse his students in the Chinese culture to improve their language skills.

"I would like to do an 'English Camp' where we teach them English and our students learn Chinese. Possibly, they could stay with a Chinese family," he said.

Of Perkins' 24 students last year, 15 continued on to the advanced class, and this year 16 beginning students have joined the ranks of those wanting to master a unique foreign language.

Half the advanced class consists of seventh- and eighth-grade middle-school students. There is even a surprise student in the advanced class this year: A second-grade student, adopted from China as a baby, whom Perkins states is holding her own with the older students.

Of the beginning class, 11 are middle-school students and five are high-school students.

What draws these middle- and high-school students to learn a language that not only includes foreign words, but foreign characters to depict those words? Add to that coping with the importance of inflection of the words, also known as tone; variations can change the meaning.

Second-year student Savannah Spear said, "A lot of people take Spanish. I think it's cool to take a different language. I would like to travel to visit foreign cultures."

Spear likes the challenge.

"You have to learn how to write the characters, how to say it," she said. "There are five different tones. Each tone with a word is something different. Everything is difficult."

Eighth-grade student Wyatt Hougham said, "I was looking into a language to learn and decided Chinese would be the best to learn because it's widespread and China is a growing country. It's also a good business investment for the future. There are different areas of business you can go into with a foreign language."

Learning a language is also fulfilling.

"I really like being able to have conversations and I like reading characters," said Hougham. "It's gratifying to read an entire paragraph in Chinese and know what it means."

Second-year student Erin Dow agreed with Hougham about the importance of learning Chinese.

"I knew it would be good for my future because most of the world's population speaks Chinese," she said. "It will also help me get into a good college."

For more information or to make donations, contact David Perkins at [email protected]