Another China Food Scandal

When will it stop - China's contaminated food scandal widens International Herald Tribune There was even stories of parents being worried about Halloween Candy since some of it may have been made in China. And with the long list of food scandals, it is surprising another done dealing with Melamine comes up. Last one was with milk, so now any type of food animal or product of an animal may be at risk due to contaminated animal feed. The start of the latest scandal was eggs, and since eggs are used in so many types of processed foods the problem grows. And China exports a huge amount of food!

This type of scandal is a tremendous threat to the made in China Brand.

ChildBook - Removing the Fear of Learning Chinese

Something fun I wrote for the front page today

Afraid of Learn Chinese? Must be Halloween!

We removes the fear from learning Chinese!

• Don't be scared of Learning Chinese, ChildBook makes Learning Chinese safe with our 100% money back guarantee gives you peace of mind on your purchase, Free shipping^*, product comparison charts and over 500 customer reviews to help you pick the right product for your child.

California Proposition 8 and Chinese Voters

Proposition 8 I know Chinese who are on both sides of the issue, both good friends of mine. One is very pro, and the other very against and sent me a long E-Mail on why to vote against it. There is even a TV adv. in Chinese for Proposition 8. I could not find one against it in Chinese, only a No on Prop 8 Flyer (Chinese).

What this shows is the diversity of the Chinese Community in the US

And for those into politics and the English language - interesting article - Jerry Brown's wording may trip up Prop. 8. Jerry Brown is one of the most interesting California politicians, I heard him speak when I was living in the Bay Area. The secretary of Commerce speaking, William Daley, and Jerry Brown came in and stole the show. It was lunch speaker series at my work. I still have a cup from his time as Governor, Brown is Green - from my Aunt to my Father, and it's mine by eminent domain ;-)

Supplier Inventory Headaches

Some of my suppliers are cutting back on their stock, which is frustrating when I want to order an item and I need to wait.

How to Write ChildBook Reviews

Last week-end, we had a post requesting your kind hearts to write reviews for ChildBook.

Reviews are great to have so that others can see what materials are okay and will work for them.

These only take a few minutes to make so I hope more people will write reviews about the materials they got and service received.

To write a review, first, log in. Then

• Go to the main page of the product
• Look beneath the picture, the "Description"
• Beneath the Description, you will see the number of stars
• Beside the stars is a blue link "Write a review"
• Click on the link and happily write away
  

Please help our children learn Chinese with the best materials. Do write a review.

Monkey King Sale

With Halloween upon us, I decided to do a sale of my huge selection of Monkey King items. My favorite it the 4 book set of English books for Journey to the West. After you have read the short ones and just need to have more of your Monkey King fix, this will take care of it. Great read! More on the Monkey King if you have no idea what I am talking about.

Tang Poem Chinese Products

My favorite book that even includes a study guide:

				A Thousand Peaks: Poems from China
				Our Price: $19.95 Sale Price: $18.95 You Save $1.00!
				Chinese Poetry Anthology Spans 2,000 years--from the Han Dynasty to the 20th century-- Rhythmic translations capture astonishing beauty of original Chinese Description of culture and history that inspired the poet With illustrations

And other products:

				Chinese Tang Dynasty Poems Book 4. Traditional Chinese with Bo Po Mo. Softcover.
				Our Price: $8.95 Sale Price: $7.95 You Save $1.00!
				Chinese Tang Dynasty Poems Book 4, a collection of simple Tang Dynasty poems. A colorful picture book with interpretation on the meaning of each poem. Easy for children to understand & learn poetry. Traditional characters with Pinyin. Soft Cover.
				Best of Children Tang Dynasty Poems, Volume 2. Traditional Chinese with Bo Po Mo. Hardcover.
				Our Price: $18.95 Sale Price: $12.95 You Save $6.00!
				Best of Children Tang Dynasty Poems, Volume 2. Traditional Chinese with Bo Po Mo. Hardcover. Each poem has an interpretation and its origin.
				Children Tang Dynasty Poems Book 4, HF#6. Traditional Chinese with Bo Po Mo. Softcover.
				Our Price: $4.99
				Children Tang Dynasty Poems Book 4, HF#6, a collection of simple Tang Dynasty poems. A colorful picture book with interpretation on the meaning of each poem. Easy for children to understand & learn poetry. Traditional characters with Bo Po Mo. Soft Cover.
				Children Tang Dynasty Poems Book 3, HF#5. Traditional Chinese with Bo Po Mo. Softcover.
				Our Price: $4.99
				Children Tang Dynasty Poems Book 3, HF#5, a collection of simple Tang Dynasty poems. A colorful picture book with interpretation on the meaning of each poem. Easy for children to understand & learn poetry. Traditional characters with Bo Po Mo. Soft Cover.
				40 Poems Of Tang Dynasty - Poem of A Drifter. Traditional Chinese in Mandarin, Book with CD. Hardcover
				Our Price: $19.95 Sale Price: $14.95 You Save $5.00!
				40 Poems Of Tang Dynasty in Mandarin. Colorful illustrations. Traditional Characters with Bo Po Mo. Hard Cover. Book with CD. A collection of simple poems with five- or seven-character verse. Each poem has an interpretation of its meaning with an ancient Chinese illustrations.

Enlightenment and China

A recent article in the Economist mentioned the US and Europe need to have better relations so the can propagate the ideas of the enlightenment, since in the next 20 years other world powers will be shaping the world (the comment is at the end of the article).

So which powers - my guess is China and India. Both have major challenges and have made amazing progress economically. Other nations have expanding populations that are definitely going to have an impact on the world, but I don't see the educated population and working governments needed to compete in the world economically in them.

The question I have, is what does the enlightenment really mean?

For me, it refers to when people were given the knowledge due to the printing press and had the ability to start questioning the world they lived in., which is also known as the age of reason. With the increased ability of filtering the Internet and other communication vehicles, it limits the information people give. This could be seen as a threat to the foundation of Western Thought, in those countries that put such filters in place (and they are becoming increasingly popular). These filters allow an elite to control their populations through controlling information. The enlightenment is also seen as the foundation that created democracy, replaced superstition with science, and reduced intolerance. Some countries have the belief their citizens need to be guided, so there is an avoidance of what happened in the USSR when it fell apart and became just Russia.

For the European Diplomat, my guess is it refers to democracy, human rights, and individual freedom.

My daughter recently studied the enlightenment in her European AP class and guess who helps her study - yes, the Father with the History Teaching Credential, so it was fun to write this.

Product Reviews

Product reviews are so important and I really appreciate all the customers who have done them. They help in choosing the right product so much, and they only take a few minutes to do. I wish more customers would do the, it's surprising as a percentage how few customers do them. May be the fact they need to login to create a post causes a problem, I know the fact it's not 100% obvious where the link is for doing a post is an issue (which because I rent my software, it limits how much I can customize it).

Reasons for Returns

The recent economy is resulting in more returns, and the reasons are getting less reasonable. I am not changing my return policy yet, but I am concerned.

My goal with my very good return policy is to make a happy customer and be fare. But unfortunately, some recent reasons I have been given for returns are starting to bother me. Being honest, when I get an item such as a DVD or Software returned, I can't resell it so I take loss. So returni

Chinese Flash Cards

Simplified Chinese Flash Cards and Traditional Flash Cards have been revised and I fixed the products that are attached to each category.

chinese picture dictionary

Some cute Chinese Picture Dictionaries that ChildBook carries:

• Mini Picture Dictionary by Milet (Chinese/English)
• Mandarin Chinese Picture Dictionary--Berlitz (Chinese/English). Softcover. 128 pages
• Oxford Picture Dictionary (Traditional Chinese/English). Softcover. 304 pages
• Children's Learning Dictionary of Daily Life, Numbers and Colors. Book with CD. Traditional Chinese & English.
• Far East American English Dictionary For Children. Traditional Chinese and English. Hardcover.
• Mandarin Chinese English Bilingual Visual Dictionary. Simplified Chinese with pinyin. Softcover
• Chinese Word Book by Jiang An. Book with CD. Soft Cover.

The Chinese Picture Dictionaries range from actual photographs, to cute graphics that are used. Chinese Word Book by Jiang An. Book with CD. Soft Cover is actually a coloring book.

Practical Chinese Curriculum - The Effective Way to Learn Chinese

Practical Chinese is one of my favorite Learning Chinese Textbooks Series. It's also known as The Effective Way to Learn Chinese, and a lot of people for whom other systems have not worked out for, use Practical Chinese. I like how the author, Wendy Lin developed Practical Chinese to teach her own daughters in the US, because the traditional Learning Chinese method that focused on characters was not working. Practical Chinese uses Pinyin and English, and builds up competency by focusing on conversation through it's ten levels. Feedback has been very positive from customers, especially for the activity book.

Short summary of Practical Chinese

Name	Motivation to Write	Author Location	Characters	Teacher's Edition	Age		CD	Levels
Practical Chinese - Effective way to learn Chinese	Teach her kids to learn Chinese in the US (Wendy Lin)	US (from Taiwan)	Simplified and Traditional Chinese Character Versions with Pinyin	No	Ages 3 - Teenager (some adults even use it)		Yes	10

Business Chinese - Learning Chinese for Business

Business Chinese is a bit different than learning Chinese for the regular learner, you usually have tight deadlines and need to get some survival words ASAP.

My suggestions:

• Complete Chinese Learning Suite Software for Mandarin Chinese
• Learn Chinese Now: Language Tutor Software
• Pimsleur Quick and Simple Mandarin Chinese: Mandarin
• Chinese For Dummies. Mandarin.
• Flashcards, Lingolook for Foreign Travel - China - Simplified Characters

Ancient Chinese Stories

Some Ancient Chinese Stories I would recommend for reading:

The Magic Brocade - Cute story of an ancient Chinese legend, beautiful pictures! Bilingual in excellent Chinese and English

Lady White Snake - 800 year old Chinese Folktale, the book is just wonderful. Excellent background pages in the back all about the legend and Chinese opera. Highly recommended for learning about the Chinese Culture and especially for use in the class room. There is also a DVD of Lady White Snake available.

The Great Voyage of Zheng He, Bilingual Book -discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

Story of Chinese Zodiac, Hardcover Book - Cute book, also available in softcover and DVD.

Ancient China - DK Eyewitness Books. English. Hardcover. - Good book about Ancient China.

The Ch'I-Lin Purse : A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories by Linda Fang - Great book in English with lots of ancient Chinese Stories and a lot of fun to read. Stories are short. Also available in hard cover, The Ch'I-Lin Purse : A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories.

Cloud Weavers: Ancient Chinese Legends - 23 legends and myths from ancient China, the stories are a great read.

Positive Chinese News - Press and Land Reform

Is China Dismantling Its 'Socialist' Countryside? - Land reform is coming to China, it's very controversial and a ticking time bomb with 60 to 70% of the population still in the countryside and pretty poor, compared to the now rich coastal areas. And toss into this mess corruption issues and farmland being made into factories by local party chiefs or people who paid enough bribes. Not to mention more traditional leaders who see this as a key issue, and the danger of becoming like other countries with large land owners, such as China before the 1949 revolution, and a lot of poor people.

I see the land reform as positive news, the trick is doing it right.

Other positive news is Olympic Media Rules Preserved in China: Liberalization Applies Only to Foreigners which is a step in the right direction. I am sure in time it will also apply to domestic media, the sooner the better.

Learning Chinese Software & Tranliteration

Transliteration is the idea of using Pinyin in helping to teach Chinese using Learning Chinese Software, instead of of getting hung up on Chinese Characters. Interesting idea.

Another Day, Another Learning Chinese Competitor Site

It seems everyday I find another web site selling Learning Chinese. In my opinion ChildBook.com does a better job of selling Learning Chinese Material, but it's amazing how many sites pop up.

It's easy to create a web site, there are a lot of tools out there to do it. It's so much easier than it was 11 years ago when I started. The challenges then become dealing with shipping, returns, back orders, and all those little tiny things that need make a great site. To me an important differentiator for ChildBook is our customer service and it's a challenge that keeps my job from being boring.

Learning Chinese Conferences for Teachers, Librarians, and Home Schoolers

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo - $1400 for exhibitors for a booth. Week before Thanksgiving

2008 Princeton University Conference on Chinese Language Instruction - April 2008

Book Expo America - Was in LA this year. Next one is in NY May 28 to 29.

American Library Association Annual Conference - This year was in Anaheim, next one is Chicago, IL July 9- July 15, 2009.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books - End of August

Texas Foreign Language Association - October 17, 2008

Massachusetts Foreign Language Association Conference - October 31

Nan Hai Co., Inc., U.S.A. - The 5th Conference on Chinese Language - November 15th in SF Area.

Northern California Foreign Language Teacher Fall Conference at UC Berkeley, November 7-8th

National Chinese Language Conference was April 17-19, 2008. Next one is April 30 - May 2, 2009 Magnificent Mile Downtown Chicago

Chinese Education Conference 2009 - March 13-15 in San Francisco.

Southwest Conference on Language Teaching - April 2-4, 2009

References:

• The Language Educator (about teaching Foreign Languages)
• http://www.askasia.org/chinese/resources.htm#curricula
• Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA)
• The Chinese Language Teachers Association
• Chinese Teacher Association of Texas
• CLTA-Florida
• Indiana - FLTA: 2008 Conference
• Ohio - K12 - Chinese Flagship Program
• NCLRC | Professional Development | Conferences and Events
• Chinese American Librarians Association

Chinese is fastest growing language taught in US schools

Chinese is fastest growing language taught in US schools with 50,000 students currently taking Chinese, up from 5000 in 2000 per a survey from American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Methanol fuel in China

Methanol fuel in China is growing! Pleasant surprise, but once I think about it not unexpected. Instead of Corn, China is focused on using Coal, and now China is the world's largest Methanol Producer. In 2007 4.7 billion gallons of Methanol were produced. By 2012 10% of China's oil will be supplied by Methanol per a 2006 article, I would not be surprised if it is much more than that. If you have a bit of extra cash, a report that should answer many questions on this - Methanol Market Research (China) :: 6 Octuber 2008. There is also the issue that there is a shortage of coal, which has increased the price of coal due to the shutdown of unsafe mines that produced a lot of coal in China.

Automated Phone Navigation in Chinese and English - Arghh!!!

So I was calling this place in Hong Kong, select 3 for English after hearing some Cantonese and Madnarin. OK, should be easy. Then gives me a list of departments, then I select sales. Rings, rings, rings and get an recorded answer in Cantonese. So dial zero, more Cantonese. So finally get back to the main menu. I called in four times, and finally dialed customer service. Then I got transferred 3 times.

After experience this, I don't think I am going to be so frustrated by the automated phone systems in the US. I am so used to just dialing zero to get around the system, except some systems have disabled that option (US Post Office).

China Rising - Food for thought

Interesting article to read - China, India world order vs end of American empire, global finance Crisis - Cleveland Indy Media Center and some type of conference. There are three stories/interviews. Several points I disagree with, but they are interesting to read. I don't want to get into a flame war so I try to keep this blog non-political.

I agree China and the US have a number of challenges ahead. The web page did mention two, Taiwan being the most obvious, but Korea is another one. What happens if and when North Korea collapses? Will China allow S. Korea to take over N. Korea? S. Korea is very worried about the cost of fixing N. Korea, especially after witnessing the cost of the unification of West and East Germany.

Learning Chinese in Australia Report

Demand for Asia study overhaul from the Age in Australia. The challenge with Chinese is you have native speakers and you combine them in the same class as non-native speakers of Chinese. So the report is suggesting segregating these two groups.

My 2 Cents:
Another problem with Learning Chinese is the material used to teach is pretty boring. As well as using methods that work in Taiwan and China, but just don't work in the US. That's why Wendy Lin for example developed her curriculum Practical Chinese for teaching her daughters Chinese. Many Chinese teachers because of their frustration develop their own curriculum, but as they find out about Chinese Made Easy for Kids, Chinese Made Easy, and Practical Chinese. Better Chinese is very popular in schools because it uses stories, activities, and multimedia for teaching Chinese. So for example their Teaching Chinese books come along with a set of CD's with the stories on them such as My First Chinese Words Set that has 36 books plus a CD's. All four curriculumn are available in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese Characters.

Customer Service Story of the Week

A customer ordered a lot of a series of textbooks, more than I had in stock. And my supplier did not have enough either, and other companies I am friendly with were also out. What to do?

So I shipped everything I had, and had my supplier drop ship, and then I found a company that had them and bought them at retail (it hurt) and shipped them to the customer, since they needed them ASAP.

My unexpected emergency of yesterday and today.

Chinese Calligraphy Candidate for World Heritage Designation

Chinese calligraphy candidate for world heritage designation - That would be nice, Chinese Characters can be incredibly artistic.

Fun book for kids that teaches some Chinese Characters - Long Is A Dragon - Chinese Writing for Kids by Peggy Goldstein.

And for adults A Complete Guide to Chinese Calligraphy by Qu Lei Lei and The Chinese Calligraphy Bible: The Essential Illustrated Guide to Over 300 Beautiful Characters by Cathy Yat-Ming Wu

The Next Bailout: Your Family - Student Loans

The Next Bailout: Your Family from the Wall Street Journal. As my daughter is getting closer to colleges this article was timely. An example is the average college graduate has 22,000 in student loans and many also have credit card debts. An extreme example was a person with $160,000 cost for college and now has $20,000 in student loans, and the best job they could get was making $40,000 a year. So now they plan to go to law school. Hopefully they read this blog post before applying. http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2008/07/how-the-cravath.html

Disclaimer - my wife's cousin, the family star worked at Cravath before he started his own firm.

Chinese Halloween Sale

My weekly sale is Learning Chinese Halloween Products. So what does that mean? Basically anything with a front cover that could be be a costume qualifies. So Monkey King and Mulan definitely qualify. So does anything with a Panda on the front, and a few others...

And my wife is having on her site a $9.99 Chinese Dress Sale, they make great Halloween Costumes!

Brazil Bans Chinese Food Product Imports

Brazil bans Chinese food products from eTaiwan News. And I thought my friend who tried so hard never to eat anything from China about eight months ago was going overboard. An example was in the restaurant, he would only order a vegetarian dish and not even tofu, since you never knew where it was coming from. And this is a nice article for reference - Wary US Olympians Will Bring Food to China.

Of course some countries are being careful not to upset China, such as Thailand. A public health scare, a PR failure Bangkok Post, Thailand - Oct 4, 2008

Chinese Children Problems in the US

My wife was reading the Chinese Daily News that had an article about some new problems in the Chinese community. Some parents will send their newborns back to China to be taken care of by the grand parents, and of course they are spoiled rotten. Often around age 5 or 6 they come back here to live with the parents. One parent, the Father may be working out of state in a restaurant, and the Mother is working long hours. So the kid becomes a latch key kid and may not do that great educationally and may even get involved with gangs.

I would appreciate a link to the original story if anyone can sent it to me from the Daily News, the pictures alone are worth it.

Another challenge is parents who send their kids to school in the US, while they stay in Taiwan or China. Often the parents have no adult supervision, not even relatives, for those in High School. Dangerous combination, high school, cars, no adult supervision often means problems. Yes, the majority turn out fine. There is also a lot of anger when it's hard for the parents to get a Visa to visit their kids in the US.

Learning Chinese Textbooks & Curriculum

I am in the process of updating my comparison chart of Learning Chinese Textbooks & Curriculum. Better Chinese has now been added. The chart compares what textbook series by:

• L