 I'm your host Bill Sharp. Our show today is Learning Chinese is Easy, and our guest is Ms. Lily Hong, owner of the Hawaii Chinese Immersion School. Welcome to Asian Review. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, I don't really know if learning Chinese is so easy, but of course we like to see more and more people study Chinese, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, well, is it easy or is it hard? And why? Well, Chinese has got to be one of the most difficult languages to learn. Okay. Yes, and I'll give you a few reasons. One of which is that it's a tonal language. Okay. So I think most languages are either monotonous or semi-monotonous, but Chinese is a tonal language. They're intonations. Mm-hmm. So if you're even just a teensy-winsy bit off, it could mean entirely different things. So I'll give you an example. Say, Shuxue and Shuxue. Okay. To the untrained years, I was just repeating myself, but I was actually saying Shuxue, which is mathematics, and Shuxue, which is blood transfusion, and they are entirely different things. Quite different. Quite different. Yes. Yeah. So what I encourage people to do is to start from young, because when they start before age four, they have the neck to pick up the tones very naturally. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if you look at people coming out of Monterey Institute of Defense Language of Studies, they can speak it, but they still sound almost monotone. Mm-hmm. So I think once you miss that, you know, that age four, past age six, past age 12, it gets harder and harder to pick up the tones naturally. I'm not saying that it's not attainable. I've seen people do it, but it's very difficult. Well, the students at your school, what age bracket did they typically fall into? The youngest I started was two and a half, but I have people that come at five and they were not ready, because mine is a different style of teaching. It's a little bit more structured. It's very intensive. So if someone is looking to sing songs, count numbers, learn animals, that's not quite the environment. What we do is we have a very progressive curriculum. We do all of those things too, but then we actually take them from zero Mandarin to fluency. Oh. Yeah. So we're not just counting numbers, singing songs, and, you know, learning animals. Where's your school? Where's it located? We're at Hawaii Kai Drive now. Oh, Hawaii Kai Drive. Yeah. So we're at Hawaii Kai Plaza. Oh, okay. Wow, that's a good place. Yeah. We started out in, well, actually Hawaii Kai was where we started out. And then I started a second one in Kahala Mall. We were located inside Silver Center. So for several years I was running two places. It got a little tiring, so I was just focusing on Kahala. And then I moved away in 2014. I just moved back last year. So now we're in Hawaii Kai again. Oh, I see. But even when you were in Hawaii, your school was still going? I continued online lessons with those that wanted to continue because the thing with Chinese is that you either use it or lose it. I think that's the case with most languages, but especially with Chinese. Because when you stop hearing the tones, then it starts slipping away. Yeah. I see. Well, okay. Somebody says to you, well, I want to enroll in your school. And sort of what sort of thing should they be aware of? What sort of things should prospective learners of Chinese be thinking about? Yeah. First of all, it's not an overnight acquisition process. It's a long process. Even as a native speaker, I still have to go to school to learn Chinese. And I think even as an English speaker, you still have to go to school to learn grammar. And we shouldn't expect anything less. And keep in mind too... That's a very interesting answer. Because most of these kids, they go home, they don't have the opportunity to practice the language. So what they have to be aware of is that expect to expect repetition and reinforcement, meaning that expect regular attendance. Well, you grew up in Singapore, right? I did. Okay. So from age one unless you were speaking Chinese? Yes. I grew up in a trilingual language environment. So my parents spoke Hokkien to each other. My mother spoke English to me. Taiwanese. Yes. Very similar to Taiwanese. My mom spoke English to me. And my dad spoke Chinese to me. So at the... We actually subscribed to two newspapers. Every day we had to read English newspapers and Chinese newspaper. I see. Oh, interesting. So yeah, you grew up in a very, very rich language environment. Yeah. And it wasn't just me. This is very typical of Singaporean family. It's very common to find somebody that speaks multiple languages, different dialects. How about Malaysian? Do you speak any Malaysian? No, I can do... You know, I can order food. I can do basic Malay. Okay. Put it this way. I can get myself in trouble but not out of it. That's a good answer. That's a very good answer. Get yourself into trouble or you might get out of it. So what do you think about some of these... How should I call them? Packaged systems for learning Chinese like Rosetta Stone. That's, I guess, the real popular one right now. What's your take on that as a language professional? Well, I think everybody has a different learning style. So for me, I prefer to be in a classroom where there are people I can practice with versus a software. However, I think they are good tools for reinforcement. So for example, my students, when they go home, they don't have anybody to talk to. But it's good for them to, you know, listen to the software and maybe do some recording and then bring it back to class. So they are more, I would consider them more reinforcement tools, more supplementary tools. Interesting answer. Okay. Well, you know, when somebody goes to learn Chinese, there's all kinds of ways to go at it. Right? You can learn Ba Hua. You can learn Wen Yan Yuan. So how do you explain this to people? You mean the different dialects? Not different dialects, but like so-called vernacular Chinese versus classical Chinese. How do you explain this thing about learning Chinese and all its many possibilities? I think rather than tell them these are the many options, Mike, I would ask them, what is your goal? What are you trying to achieve? Are you doing this to do business in China? Then you would want to learn to speak standard Mandarin. Right. Yeah. So that would be my first question to them. What is your goal in doing this? Are you going for a holiday? Then I would just teach you to travel sentences. You don't have to. Are you learning this to do your AP examination? So it really depends on their goals. That's interesting. AP examinations. Do you get students in there that are preparing for AP examination? Yes. I have students that have already undertaken both AP and SAT exams. And they scored A's in it. Really? Yes. Do students come from like Iwilani school, Puneho? Most of my students come from Puneho school. And that brings up an interesting question because they already have Chinese at their school. Right. So why are they learning with me? Because what we do is very intensive. So for example, my three year old were already reading the books that Puneho was using in middle school. Yes. Not to brag. So when they come, they are actually learning at a more advanced level. For example, I have a student that was learning with me. She's also taking at Puneho school. But at Puneho school, she was inducted into the advanced learning class. So she was one of five students in that class. And she was the only non-native speaker. Yes. And the rest were native speakers. So because she was taking lessons at my school, she was able to go into the advanced class. When you say native speaker, you mean like the offspring of Chinese parents who were studying Chinese at Puneho? Yes. So they have been speaking since they were little kids. I remember studying Chinese at university. And all those students from Hong Kong and Taiwan, they were going to sneak into the class because they think it's an easy A. And they make it hard for you. Yeah. I don't know about that. And then some universities, they really crack down on that. They saw that people were just trying to take advantage of that. And they created all these filters, which I appreciated. And I also have students going to Marino and Iolani and other schools. And what I encourage them to do is, you know, don't go to school and try to get an ECA. Pick up a different language. So now they're at their school learning French and learning Spanish, learning a different language. So in your approach to teaching Chinese, do you start students off learning, you know, abbreviated characters, Gentizu or Funtizu? Again, it goes back to the goal of the student. Why are you learning Chinese? Are you going to be living in Taiwan? Or are you doing this because you think you're going to be having, you know, future business opportunities in China? This is a common question I get asked from parents, is do you teach Gentizu or Funtizu? And I ask them, well, why are you doing this? Is it because you are planning to go to Taiwan or China? Now, right off my back, I'll tell you there's about 30 million people learning Funtizu, the traditional characters. But there's 1.4 billion people learning Gentizu. And the number is increasing by the tens of thousands on a daily basis. My daughter is learning Gentizu. And I can assure you that the gap between Funti and Gentizu is going to be maintained very well in her lifetime. You know, I see what you're saying. I think there is possibly one advantage to learning Funtizu, and it all depends on your goals. You know, if you're a university person who thinks maybe the rest of your research life is going to be, you know, researching like modern Chinese history, a lot of those materials are written in Funtizu. And so you really have to know those. For other people, I don't know, business people doing business in China, I'm not sure if learning Funtizu is all that worth it. When I started, I started on Funtizu, I thought it was easier to go from Funtizu to Gentizu. Of course, I never had the experience of going from Gentizu to Funtizu. But in my mind, in my heart, I think right there, wrongly, Funtizu to Gentizu is easier. Yes, definitely. I mean, to learn something harder to write, you have so many more strokes in Funtizu than Gentizu. But one important thing to consider is that if you learn Gentizu, you can read Funtizu. But if you only learn Funtizu, it's hard to read Gentizu. And this is why. When I look at a Funtizu, I can find my Gentizu in there. I can find the abbreviation in there. But when I look at Gentizu because it's been taken out of something more complex, I cannot start building the complex around it. I can't see the Funtizu. But in Funtizu, I can find the Gentizu inside. That's very interesting. Can you give me an example? So, for example, Ma. So in Funtizu, you have so many more strokes. But you can see the Ma character that's nestled in there. Or Mama. That's an interesting point. I haven't heard that one before. How many instructors do you have at your school? Currently, it's just me. Just you? So, I think with language learning, there's periods of frustration. And peaks and valleys, right? And when students are bombed out, they're in a valley. How do you deal with that? Well, we don't just teach the language. We teach the culture, too. We do Chinese cooking. So we incorporate a lot of the cultural stuff. I take my kids to China. And it's not just the kids. I take the parents. I take the grandparents. So it helps them to see why am I learning this and they are able to apply. So when we go to China, I take them to village schools. I take them to city schools so they can see the disparity. And I drop them in the classroom. So when you, an American kid, drop in the Chinese classroom, it swims or sinks. Where in China do you go? I mean, these schools, do you take your distance? Where are they at? We went to the big cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, Siyan. And we also go to more of the suburban areas like Guizhou, Guilin, and Suzhou, where we went to the Panda Observatory. So it's not just dry textbook stuff because I actually didn't use textbook with them during their foundation years. It was mostly flashcards. Because with textbook, I noticed if you close the book, it sort of closed your mind. So I was using flashcards during the foundation period. And now as they are picking up sentence structures, contextual sentences, then we start using textbook for references. That's really interesting. But that practice, the application is a very critical component of language learning. You have to immerse them. You have to drop them in that kind of environment where they'll be compelled to speak it. Great. Well, I think this would be a good place right here to take a break. You're watching Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharp. My guest today is Ms. Lily Ong. She's the owner of the Hawaii Chinese Immersion School. And we've been talking about, as you could guess, learning Chinese. When we come back, we're going to change gears a bit. We're going to segue a bit. And we're going to talk about Singapore. Today's Singapore, Singapore in the past, Singapore in the future. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Hello. This is Martin de Speng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is called Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. And it's going to be on Think Tech Hawaii from downtown Honolulu on Tuesday afternoon's 5 p.m. And we're going to talk about to make architecture more inclusive on the islands, which is one of the definitions of humane, which is being tolerant of many people of nature, of many other influences. So we're going to have some great guests, like today's guest, for example, my collaborator, David Rockwood, who is the author of the awesome manifestation of humane architecture in the background. So see you on Tuesdays 5 p.m. and look forward to... Welcome back to Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharp. My guest today is Miss Lily Ong. She is the owner of the Hawaii Chinese Immersion School. And during the first half of the show, we talked about just that, learning Chinese. We want to do a bit of a change-up here. And we want to talk about Singapore now, in that she is originally from Singapore and just very recently spent some time back there. Singapore, wow. Where shall I start? Lee Kuan Yew is gone now. And of course, he's the father of their creator of Singapore, modern Singapore. So what lies ahead for Singapore? Do you want to talk a little bit about what led up to this time? How do you want to go about this? I think it's always important to look back at history. So let's take a look at the humble roots of Singapore. The humble roots. Humble roots, yes. So Singapore, again, it's independence in 1965. And within one generation, I mean, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew basically turned it from the world status into first world status. I'd like to look at some of the things that he has done to enable this transition. We all know he's iron fisted, and we all know he's a dictator. But Singapore was very fortunate in that way. Well, how do you feel about that? I think dictatorship is very dangerous if it's in the hands of a wrong person. But in the hands of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, he was a man of integrity. He was a principled man. So he used to say that I'm the highest paid prime minister in the world, but I'm the poorest. And if you look at the corruption index in Singapore, it's one of the lowest in the world. That's true. Singapore has a very low corruption index, very, very low, because the bureaucrats have paid very, very well. Yeah. And why not? I mean, they are essentially the CEO of a country. If we're going to pay CEO of Microsoft and why not the CEO of a country, that's very critical. And I agree to them, you know, getting paid substantially so that we can attract the right talents into government. Okay. So let's take a little closer look at Lee Kuan Yew. What are his pluses? What are his minuses? I mean, you know, in the past, and then we're going to talk about the future. Okay. So he essentially inherited a swampy village. That's what we were. I mean, there were tigers roaming in the forest. Backwater in the British Empire. Yes, there were crocodiles in the waters. And we were a land of immigrants. You know, we have so many different Chinese group, the Hakka, Teochew, Hockians, and they did not get along. And then we have the Malays and the Indians. The ethnic divisions was very rife. And he said about a mission accomplishing two goals, just two goals, but very lofty aims. One was to forge a national identity among all these people that did not get along. And the other one was to create a human capital engine. Okay. If you look at Singapore, we have no natural resources. Back in those days, we had none. Today, we still have none. So the only resource we have is our people. And therefore, we've been investing in education to bridge this human capital engine. And I think the education policy of Singapore has been instrumental in its success. So starting from 1960s, it went through three basic restructuring phases. The first phase is a survival-driven phase. We were just trying to equip people with basic literacy so that we could supply cheap labor on the world market. And then we got into the 1970s. In 1973, there was an oil crisis. And that kind of exposed our economic fruities. We realized that we can't just survive on providing cheap labor. We need to provide quality labor. So we went from basic literacy to skill training to, you know, to a more highly educated workforce. Let me throw you a curveball question. Sure. Yeah. Just to make things exciting. How did you think about Singapore leaving the Malaysian Union? It was a blessing in disguise. Where Mr. Lee Kuan Yew announced on the radio, he shed a tear. You know, we were not ready, and we were just kind of kicked out. But as we looked back, asking Singaporeans, we're so glad it happened. If we had still remained, I don't think we would have the autonomy to do a lot of what we did in these five decades. That's a very interesting answer. I've heard the argument said too that probably Singapore wouldn't have been as prosperous of a port as it is today if it had remained within Malaysia. That's a possibility. Just for diplomatic reasons, I don't want to say it. But yeah, that's, you know, when you're part of a bigger transport, it's harder to move your pieces around. But because Mr. Lee Kuan Yew has a small island, it was easy for him to say, okay, the wind is going to blow east, and the wind blows east. Okay, okay. So here's another hardball question for you. Everybody I've ever talked to has always really admired the economic accomplishments of Singapore. And it is extremely impressive. There's just no doubt about it. But when it comes to the political system, that seems to get some people concerned and I think maybe it should be a little bit more liberal than it is. How do you feel about that? Well, I appreciated the way Singapore was ruled. I still do. When I look at the problems we have in America, with guns and, you know, the liberalism, even if we go to Singapore today and say, okay, no more K&A, I think people will be up in arms. We like our rules because we see the first of our rules. You might remember the American teenager, Michael Fay. Yes, I do remember that. That bad incident. Yeah, so he was charged on 43 counts of vandalism. A typical Singaporean kid wouldn't even contemplate doing that because we know the rules and we stay within the boundaries of it. And I think rules are necessary to keep the country, to keep the law and order in the country. I personally appreciate it. Okay, here comes a real hardball question. I know you can take it. It seems that whenever an opposition member gets elected to parliament, the government gets very, very upset and feels very threatened and seeks to make life very miserable for that particular person conjuring up all kinds of lawsuits, trying to financially ruin them. What do you think about that? Well, let's take a look at the last election. The last election was sort of different, though, wasn't it? It was sort of... Well, I think that was the first election post his death. Yes. And so there were some different characteristics about that, but when he was alive, it seemed that one opposition member gets elected and it's like the whole world is going to fall apart or something. I don't mean to be hard on Singapore, but I'm really interested in hearing what you have to say. Yes, I think Mr. Lee Kuan Yew is about leading the country in one direction. And when you start having different perspectives coming up, it can tear the country in different directions. I feel that we're so young a nation, we need to just go one direction. The racial element, the racial composition of Singapore is always a very touchy, sensitive issue, isn't it? Well, the Chinese has always been the majority, 77%, and the government is also ensuring that the Chinese remains the majority. There's some cultural economics involved in that. Sure, sure. So if you don't mind me using the example of Philippines. Sure, no, no, go right ahead. So the percentage of Chinese and Philippines is very low. Chinese Filipinos. Sure. But they own over 60% of the businesses in Philippines. So there's some cultural economics. I believe certain ethnic groups are more motivated to achieve in economic ways. Well, I think that's a fair statement. Yeah, that's a fair statement. Yeah, that's a fair enough statement. It always seemed that, remember, in the days when there was a Far Eastern Economic Review, which I thought was a great, great, great magazine, the editor-in-chief was Derek Davis, and he was always in a constant squabble with Lee Kuan Yew. Far Eastern Economic Review was sometimes banned from distribution in Singapore. They didn't get along to say the least. But no doubt, Singapore is a very impressive place. I don't think anybody can take that away from it. Sorry, just to add to that. We are too young a nation for free press and for full liberalism. I think we're too young a nation for that. Really? Yeah, we're still finding our place in the world. I think one thing Singapore has to be very cautious of is not to get complacent despite our achievement. That's interesting, because I think of South Korea, I think of Taiwan. We have very young democracies that are very, very vibrant. And I sort of put Singapore into that same group. But I think tradition remains and traditions run very deep in our roots. Okay. Yeah. So we're coming down to our last three minutes here, so the time really, really flies by. What's Singapore's future? Post, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Well, he was actually asked a question before he passed. You know, what's in Singapore's future? And this is what he said. Let me quote him because he's wiser. He said that Singapore will be safe for another 10 years. And he said 10 years because he has studied so much history and he decided that nothing settles for a country over a decade. So if you look at Stalin, you know, he had the entire Eastern Europe. He had most of Asia all the way to Siberia. And he had outer Mongolia. But by the time Gorbachev came about, he was just tossed up onto the platform. And what I'm trying to say is, right now Singapore has a good team to carry itself forward for 10 years. And what comes after the 10 years depends on the succeeding team. Are we able to find a good succeeding team or one that's just as capable or more capable to continue carrying Singapore? I look at the younger generation. I get a little worried because they grow up with their mates. Most of them don't even know how to tie their shoelaces. And when you're grown into them... Really? Yeah. And so I think we need to continue to inculcate, you know, that work ethics to carry the nation forward. Very interesting. Well, I wish we had more time, but we're just about, you know, coming down to the end here. It also just sees this like a squeeze in one fight. It always seems that Singapore is very concerned, rightfully so, about its relationship with Malaysia and Indonesia. Which is sometimes a little bit jealous of Singapore. And obviously are much, much bigger. So it looks like our time is about up. So we'll have to stop here. And thank you for our guests for joining us today. And thank you for viewing. Please join me again next week when my guest will be Dr. Sun Wei Hong, a faculty member at Hawaii Pacific University and also a very accomplished Arhu player, a Chinese violin player. He's going to talk to us about Chinese music and I think we can talk him into playing a few songs for us. So we'll see you then.