My husband and I have given a lot of thought as to how to encourage our children to still be Chinese language savvy while growing up in the US. We’ve even thought about the possibility of moving back to China and sending them to international schools. Basically we care about them being excellent in both Chinese and English.

Since my husband and I both came to US when we were little (7 and 4 respectively), we know how hard it is to force kids to learn Chinese. He and I both fought our parents hard against going to Chinese school. In the long run, most of our Chinese was greatly improved after high school, when we both realized how important it is.

We have looked into many, many options. Some of these has not happened yet; play dates in Chinese, starting a Chinese Cultural Center in Davis, etc. Some things has happened; we bought a bunch of DVDs in Chinese only from China (Shrek 1-2-3 in Chinese, Baby Einstein in Chinese, Teletubbies in Chinese), we try to speak only Chinese in front of our little girl. This is all because starting this week, she’s enrolled in city classes Monday through Friday, which will all be in English anyway. We’re not as worried about her English development, especially with a mother who as in honors English and a father who took AP English.

However, at the end of the day, we really don’t want to be constantly worried about sending her to great afterschool programs and camps just because they are in English. We don’t want to worry about “not if”, but “when” she’ll start fighting us about learning Chinese.

So I’ve been doing some research on Chinese Immersion Schools. The information I’ve found has been amazing. Just public schools alone, there’s two in San Francisco, another on in Hayward, one in Cupertino, and one being discussed in Palo Alto. These are all happening in the past 2-3 years. Then there’s the private schools, one of them is opening in Berkeley this year and another in SF. There’s a ton more: http://www.fccncalif.org/schools.htm.

And we just found out that there might be an immersion school in Sacramento and Woodland – both very close to us in Davis.

Another awesome thing we just found in Davis is a Chinese-English bilingual daycare. There’s a long waiting list and they accept kids starting at 3 years of age. There are tons of these places throughout the Bay Area. I used to do after-school tutoring at a place like this when I was in high school.  As to the quality of this place? – It’s hard to say. We went to meet with the director, who is very nice and does all the Chinese teaching herself. However, there was not a single poster in Chinese on her walls except for a poster about “bo-po-mo-fo”.  Either way it’s better than nothing.

In the long run, I think the best thing would still be doing frequent trips back to China. This way my kids will have a motivation for maintaining their Chinese.