WARNING: Video may be NSFW.
When I was growing up in a suburb of Springfield, Massachusetts, there was nothing sexy about learning Mandarin Chinese. As a kid, my brother and I woke up early Saturday mornings so that my parents would drive us about 45 minutes up to a high school in Amherst, Massachusetts to attend Chinese school. I dreaded going to Chinese school, mostly because I had to wake up early as well as the fact that I would have to miss my Saturday morning cartoons. You see, this was at a time in the early 1980s before the ubiquity of cable and cable stations that would air cartoons thought out the week and day.
Living in Western Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was the closest area with a sizable Chinese or Taiwanese population – with many academics or professionals working or living in that area. Later, my parents switched to a slightly closer Chinese school in Hartford, Connecticut where Chinese school took place on Sundays.
And when I saw Chinese school, the teachers were essentially volunteer parents who acted as teachers. The classes were not particularly engaging. And at the time, the point of learning Chinese – especially growing up in Western Massachusetts, seemed pointless. In the Eighties, the rising power that America feared was Japan, Inc. Of course now, China’s rise has lead to a great interest in studying Mandarin Chinese.
The other day, I saw my friend share on Facebook an article on this new online service called Sexy Mandarin, and took a look at the first lesson on YouTube. I just had to laugh and how blatantly the service was using lingerie-clad attractive Chinese women to entice and engage the potentially interested Chinese language student. As the saying goes, “Sex sells.”
And I have to assume this site is targeting predominately men – if not white men explicitly playing to the Asian fetish. If Sexy Mandarin and the Internet/YouTube had existed as a kid, I think my interest in learning Mandarin would have been greatly, how should I say, enhanced.
Which reminded me of another “service” I had seen a Facebook friend, share a while ago – I am Xiao Li, which is produced by a friend of his. Those “lessons” are updated on a semi-regular basis and features also an attractive Chinese woman – albeit more properly dressed, but speaking in a abnormally high pitched voice IMHO. I imagine the producer and Mandarin “teacher” are trying to become YouTube stars and rake in the money through virality.
I really wonder how well these online service, especially the more popular and legitimate ones such as ChinesePod.com do. I’ll have to try them out, if for the fact that I am having to deal with Chinese colleagues all the time for work. Thankfully, there is Google Translate, which does a great job for emails, documents and websites – but is still imperfect. Ideally, the best way to learn Chinese is to have a Chinese or Taiwanese girlfriend who is fluent. Maybe that is the next Internet startup around the corner – SexyMandarinTeacherGirlfriend.com ? (Maybe I should register that domain name…)
