Hao Mama 好妈妈

I am not a big fan of Chinese children’s music. Yet over the past seven years I have spent innumerable hours listening to it, in all it’s synthesized, saccharine sweetness, and have learned to tune it out to such a degree that after I drop my children off at school, I occasionally leave the CD playing because I no longer hear it. Nevertheless, early on, I bought and downloaded as many Chinese songs as I could, as I was (and still am) convinced that music is one of the surest and fastest ways for children to learn language. Now that my two children are comfortably fluent in Mandarin, I have tried to wean them off the CDs, which has worked without effort for my seven-year-old but not so well for my three-year-old.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the new Little Dragon Tales, Chinese Songs for Children CD, performed by Shanghai Restoration Project featuring Yip’s Canada Children’s Choir. Read the rest of this entry »

Below are some suggestions of holiday gifts for the little linguists in your lives. I have mentioned most of these products elsewhere on this site but they are worth pointing out again because each of them has been well-used and loved by my own kids. Happy Shopping!

What young child doesn’t love playing with magnets on the fridge? Why not have them learn some Chinese while they are at it?

Kingka, a matching game that teaches young learners to recognize Chinese characters and learn the meaning. There are various ways to play it depending on the age and fluency of your children, and the sturdy character cards themselves are a great resource.

A beautiful book that creatively introduces a few characters through a fun story.

A gentle CD of songs and counting rhymes designed to teach the basic sounds of Chinese to very young children. One of my kids’ favorite CDs.

A beautiful soothing collection of lullabies that puts both my kids to sleep every night. My little one now sings “You You Zha” (the name of the first song) to signal she is ready for bed.

There is something about the drawings of Elmer that babies just love.

On a rainy week, we discovered a wonderful CD that both kids have been enjoying while stuck inside the house: Baby’s First Words in Chinese. I had seen the CD around in stores for a while but never got it since our house is so overloaded with saccharine, syrupy Chinese children’s music and, to be honest, I can’t stand to listen to it anymore. But this CD is lovely, even for the adults who are trapped inside the same house. Part of a series, it is intended for babies up to age 2, and contains 50 short tracks of counting and hand rhymes and simple songs, some traditional and some new. The voices are gentle and not grating. And most important of all, both my children responded to the music as soon as they heard it. T, age 1, sings and hums along with it every time it comes on, and L, age 4.5, listens intently, recognizes some of the songs, and loves that they have alternate lyrics to the versions he has learned.

The CD is designed for parents who may not speak much Chinese at home, with a lengthy booklet about the advantages of multiple language learning for child development. All the song lyrics are included in pinyin and English translation so parents can learn them and sing along. It is intended to introduce very young children to the sounds of Chinese when they are at an important stage in their linguistic development, and the songs are organized by age (yet clearly, from our experience, it appeals to older children as well). You can listen to an audio clip and read sample pages from the booklet here.

While there is no shortage of Chinese children’s songs honoring Mama, songs about Baba are harder to find. In honor of Father’s Day, here is one, Baba Hao 爸爸好 (“Baba’s good Baba’s good, does a lot but says little… Baba’s good, Baba’s good, earns a lot but spends little.”)

You can also learn the Chinese characters for Father’s Day in this video lesson:
Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of the day, here are the lyrics of the song 我的好妈妈 (My Good Mama). Happy Mother’s Day to all the hao mamas out there.

我的好妈妈
下班回到家
劳动了一天， 多么辛苦呀
妈妈妈妈快坐下
妈妈妈妈快坐下
请喝一杯茶
让我亲亲你吧
我的好妈妈
我的好妈妈

wo de hao mama
xia ban hui dao jia
laodong le yi tian, duome xinku ya
mama mama kuai zuo xia
mama mama kuai zuo xia
qing he yi bei cha
rang qo qin qin ni ba
wo de hao mama
wo de hao mama

My good mama
After work, come home
Working all day, so tired
Mama Mama quick sit down
Mama Mama quick sit down
Please drink some tea
Let me give you a kiss
Let me give you a kiss
My good mama
My good mama

A simple and popular counting rhyme teaches kids to count to five while going on a tiger hunt. Listen to it here:

一二三四五，上山打老虎， (yi er san si wu, shang shan da laohu
老虎打不到，打到小松鼠。 laohu da bu dao, da dao xiao songshu
松鼠有几只？让我数一数， songshu you ji zhi? Rang wo shu yi shu
数来又数去，一二三四五 shu lai you shu qu, yi er san si wu)

One, two, three, four, five
Climbing the mountain to catch a tiger
Can’t catch a tiger, caught little squirrels
How many squirrels? Let me count:
One, two, three, four, five

As I have written before, memorizing songs and poems was one of the first ways L learned to speak Chinese. There is something about the rhythm of classical Chinese poetry that makes it very appealing to children; they can memorize the rhymes without even realizing that they are learning some of the most beautiful, eloquent, and profound works of literature ever written anywhere.

One of the most common poems, memorized by almost every schoolchild in China, is “Jing Ye Se” by Li Bai. Watch an animation on YouTube:

Here is the poem, in simplified characters with pinyin, followed by the English translation:　

　　chuáng qián míng yuè guāng
　　床 前 明 月 光，
　　yí shì dì shàngshuāng
　　疑 是 地 上 霜。
　　jǚ tóu wàng míng yuè
　　举 头 望 明 月，
　　dī tóu sī gù xiāng
　　低 头 思 故 乡。

Before my bed, the moon is shining bright,
I think that it is frost upon the ground.
I raise my head and look at the bright moon,
I lower my head and think of home.

This site provides a nice version of the poem, with pinyin and English translation as you hover the mouse over each character.

A friend just sent this link, which has a few popular Chinese children’s songs available to download, with pinyin and English translation. Here is the link for Two Tigers 两只老虎 – the most popular song, with the strangest lyrics (and a familiar tune).

When L turned two, a friend gave him a Chinese lullaby CD that hadn’t been getting much play from her musically-inclined but non-Chinese speaking children. It turned out to be one of the most treasured CDs in our collection, with its soothing, ethereal interpretations of traditional folk lullabies. Both kids still go to sleep to it every night and L now sings his favorite song from it (You You Zha) to his baby sister, with his own lyrics: “哥哥的妹妹睡觉了… gege de meimei, xuijiao liao….” When our CD got scratched from overuse, I searched for a new one and found that it is sold on both Amazon and at China Sprout. We have also bought another CD by the Beijing Angelic Choir which has also become a favorite during quiet moments.

My now four-year-old son (“L”) was a late talker, but an early singer. When he was two, he would enthusiastically sing through his repertoire of dozens of Chinese songs, over and over, day after day. It’s how he would get himself to sleep at night and how he would wake up in the morning. My favorite was always, “Wo De Hao Mama 我的好妈妈,” (“My good Mama”) about a child comforting an exhausted mother after a hard day’s work.

At first, it was through singing that our son learned to speak Chinese. Before either of our two children were born, my husband (a native Mandarin speaker) and I (a rusty Mandarin speaker) made a firm commitment to raise our children bilingually. But we didn’t yet realize how much work and effort true bilingualism entails. And we certainly didn’t predict what a key role the CDs of Chinese children singing high-pitched, syrupy songs, sent over by grandparents in China, would play in the process.

From the beginning, my husband has spoken exclusively Chinese to both children and I have spoken English. This method has worked well for us, but, living in an English environment, their Chinese has always needed to be supplemented and reinforced. So I have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past four years searching out the best books, websites, videos, music, and activities to help our son not just learn but enjoy Chinese. At the beginning, we tried to have as much Chinese exposure at home as possible, but before L could talk we never knew what or how much was sinking in. It became clear one day when, after listening repeatedly for weeks to a CD of children reading Tang Dynasty poems, L turned to us one day, out of the blue, and recited a poem about geese from beginning to end. We now watch in wonder as he effortlessly switches back and forth between the two languages without a thought. We struck gold when a wonderful Chinese immersion school opened last September within walking distance from our house, where he is now flourishing.

Now we are starting the process over again with his nine-month-old little sister (“T”), and if it’s like anything else about the process of parenting two children, she is certain to choose her own, unique way to learn the language that is very different from her big brother.

This website is a place for me to compile the information I have gathered, and am gathering, in the process of creating a Chinese environment for my children. I have discovered that there are a lot of valuable resources out there, they are just hard to find. The links I post will not be comprehensive but will connect to information or resources that I have personally found useful. I also hope to learn about new resources or different ways of creating bilingual environments from people who happen upon this site and find it helpful. Ideally, I would love to create a community of parents who are seeking creative ways to teach their children Chinese. So please feel free to send me any anecdotes, links, or recommendations of resources that you value; post comments; or send me suggestions or feedback on the site. You can subscribe to receive email updates through the form on the sidebar.

Thanks for reading.

Sophie