Bridging Cultures: A Birthday Well Spent Promoting Bilingual Immersion for Singaporean Students in Qidong, China

Today was such a fulfilling use of a birthday and day of leave. I envy anyone who has the opportunity and aptitude for languages and it has long been a dream of mine to enable earlier immersion study for bilingualism. It mirrors my own language journey, which I regret has ebbed and flowed with my environment and creative quality of teaching; and missed opportunities to spend more time living in China improving my Chinese and indeed, in HK improving my Cantonese.

We signed a letter of intent to allow students from Singapore to study at a local primary school in Qidong, near Shanghai, where the boys and their friends will spend the next 3 weeks. I didn’t expect having to make a speech in front of the deputy mayor! I love that the principals told them they would have to exclusively speak in Mandarin once through the school gates, and that they will have visits to the local orchard, village and market with their classmates. I am curious to see how they will fare with all the subjects taught in a different language. And I hope that they grow up with the same interest and respect I have for China.

Check out the video and ping me if you have interest to join in June next year! Feel free to share as well- we will be making this an intentional and thoughtful annual/biannual program that is designed and tailored to different school holidays and all kindergarten and primary school ages.

Heading home tomorrow after a short but very busy weekend, I will really miss the sudden cool snap weather here!