One of the trends inherent to the economic growth in China, is the fact that more and more people are taking Chinese language classes. The best way to do that? Go to China and talk to Sally Zhang. She works as Program Director at the Chinese Language Education organization in Beijing. Conveniently located in the middle of Beijing’s business center.

Beijing is home to most of her students. “At this moment, we are teaching Chinese to 82 students. Mostly Westerners, but also people coming from Japan and Korea. The continuously increasing amount of students can to a degree be explained, by the steadily increasing number of foreign companies in China. A few years ago, there was only the Chinese bank, nowadays I have five students who work for foreign banks operating in China. These financial professionals need to be able to read newspapers and documents in English as well as in Chinese. Fortunately for them, they work at companies where English is, at this point in time, the most common language.”

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By Cooper Strange

Just remember, when this becomes the newest and best addition to the Olympics, you heard it here first: it looks like the Beijing 2008 Olympics are going to introduce tickling as an Olympic sport. I think we can expect the average age of Olympians to drop a little, for as we all know, the younger folk are the champions of tickling. Read the rest of “Can They Not Just Ask?” or post a comment