I think this tells us something about the substance of her work. One thing that stands out in the countless articles about ShaoLan and her method for learning Chinese is that they usually feature her in unusual postures and poses. Now she's everywhere! Just do a Google search on her name, ShaoLan, and you'll see what I mean. in Agricultural Chemistry from National Taiwan University. ShaoLan's career as an internationally renowned Chinese language maven had its humble beginnings with a B.A. See also " Caught in China's web", Investment Week (Feb 21, 2000).īefore that, under the name Xuē Xiǎolán 薛晓岚, she wrote a book in Chinese on the art of using Word 7.0 entitled The Word Book 95. " Chinese made easy with 'Chineasy' by Noma Bar and ShaoLan Hseuh ".įor those who might be interested in ShaoLan before she became the savior of all those suffering souls who seek an easy path to learning Chinese, here are a few interesting things about her background.įirst of all, she used to be called Heidi Hsueh and was "co-founder and executive vice president of pAsia, operator of the largest auction Web sites in Taiwan and China." See " Cross-strait chameleon" in the Taipei Times (Monday, April 3, 2000), p. Namely, the clever, cutesy drawings of Chinese characters featured in ShaoLan's book are by the talented Israeli graphic designer, Noma Bar. It took a bit of digging, but I finally realized that there is a simple reason why T & H accepted this volume and is promoting it so energetically, and it has nothing to do with Chinese language learning. I have published several books and chapters from T & H, which is one of the finest art, archeology, and design publishing houses in the world, so I was deeply puzzled to find ShaoLan's misguided notions for learning Chinese featured so prominently in the T & H catalog. I wasn't surprised to find ShaoLan on TED, because you get a lot of sentimental, schlocky things there, but what really astonished me is that ShaoLan and her " Chineasy" (I think it should be "Chinhard") are featured on the outside and inside front cover and first page (!!!) - a bit of overkill - of the current Thames & Hudson catalog. There is technology, but the content is all wrong." At best, it will enable one to recognize a few Chinese pictographic characters in isolation. "I only watched the first minute of the video. Here's what the director of the Chinese Language Program at a major American university says about Chineasy: Far from it, anyone who deceives him/herself into thinking that using Chineasy is a magic bullet for learning Chinese will simply be wasting his/her time. Hsueh had made some gigantic breakthrough in transforming the most daunting script on earth into child's play. I have tried to ignore this embarrassing (for the Chinese language teaching profession) campaign for the past year and more, but now I no longer can do so, since dozens of people - many of whom are otherwise intelligent and perceptive - have written to me suggesting that we now have a panacea for learning Chinese, as though Ms. Though this is a dubious goal for an adult, I'm certain that, using her methods, no one would ever reach it. If you spend just five minutes on this a day, in a year you will have the knowledge of an eight-year-old Chinese child." “It’s a key, a gateway, but it’s also cool and so much fun. Here's another example (which mixes up spoken and written language): " Be fluent in Chinese in a flash (card)" Quite the contrary, Chinese is the easiest language I ever learned to speak, but the writing system is by far the hardest I've ever had to grapple with.īut ShaoLan Hsueh's claims that written Chinese is a snap have flooded the airwaves. But learning to read the beautiful, often complex characters of the Chinese written language may be less difficult. Her performance on TED is prefaced by the following remark:įor foreigners, learning to speak Chinese is a hard task. Her efforts to promote the scheme got a huge boost from a successful appearance on TED in February, 2013. The creator of this alleged method for learning Chinese, ShaoLan Hsueh, seems to have unlimited access to the media. It is true that her system is "simplistic", but it is not true that people who use it "learn to read Chinese", despite her repeated claim that "it works."ĭuring the last year or so, I feel as though we've been bombarded with publicity for "Chineasy". The article is preceded by a video that begins with this note:Įntrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh has devised a simplistic method for teaching English speakers to learn to read Chinese. " A New Way to Learn Chinese: Entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh aims to bridge the gap between East and West by teaching Westerners how to read Chinese". Last Friday, the following article appeared in The Wall Street Journal:
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