Enter the Dragon: Mandarin Arrives At Yip!
Written by Stephanie
January 23, 2023
You’ve probably heard this famous quote before: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Many people assume that it’s from the Bible or similar text. They’d be wrong! It’s in fact a quote by the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism.
China is a great civilization, with a rich culture and history dating back thousands of years. Today it’s an economic powerhouse that for years was the fastest-growing economy in the world.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a surge in people wanting to learn Mandarin. That’s why we at Yip are so excited about welcoming our first Mandarin tutor onto the platform! Let’s discover more about learning Mandarin and why you should consider being a Yipee.
China, The Powerhouse
There is no denying how huge the Chinese economy has become. According to data from the United Nations Statistics Division, China accounted for a whopping 28.7% of global manufacturing output by 2020. Chinese manufacturing alone was valued at almost $4 trillion. That’s a lot of bucks and a lot of global influence!
China also has a huge population, at just over 1.4 billion people. It’s true that 2023 became the year in which India is expected to overtake China in the population stakes. However, India’s economy and influence is nowhere near that of China as yet. The mighty Dragon continues to lead the way!
We should also remember that there is a huge diaspora of Chinese people around the world. In fact, according to UNESCO, only India and Mexico have more expatriates living abroad. Chinese culture, customs and cuisine continue to spread as these communities grow in many countries. For example, did you know that there are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than more than there are McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and Wendy’s outlets combined!
The Benefits of Learning Mandarin
Probably the leading benefit of learning Mandarin is that it’s popularity is growing so quickly. For example, China revealed in 2021 that over 70 countries worldwide had added Mandarin to their national education curriculum. A further 4,000 universities globally had done the same. It’s estimated that over 25 million students across the world are learning Mandarin as a second language. That’s very impressive!
So, how will learning Mandarin benefit you in the future, particularly in your business life or career? Consider these:
- An impressive addition to your CV
- Expand your job/career opportunities
- Access to the almost-largest economy in the world, China
- Ability to communicate with Chinese speakers and colleagues worldwide
- Easier ability to read and understand characters (as opposed to Roman or Cyrillic letters)
- Greater appreciation of Chinese culture (including its great food!)
Learning Mandarin With Yip
As we said, Yip is thrilled to be offering Mandarin classes on our platform. It’s a beginner’s course for those with little or no knowledge at all of Mandarin. As with any good language course, our Mandarin offering is tutored by a native speaker. She’s also very patient and delightfully friendly!
Here is a blurb from our esteemed Mandarin tutor regarding what the course will cover: “You will learn the basic foundation of the language including the phonetic system as well as basic strokes and rules of writing the characters. You will learn to have simple conversations of general greetings, on your name, age, nationality, profession and skills…” Sounds good!
It’s an exciting and thorough 12-week course and here are just some of the things that will get taught during the period:
- Week 1; Getting to know Chinese Language
- Week 2: Basic Greeting & Self Introduction
- Week 5: Dates
- Week 7: Ability & Possibility
- Week 8: Expressing past tense
- Week 9: Locations & Places
- Week 12: Practice and Review
Be Your Best Yipee
Being a ‘Yipee’ and learning Mandarin or anything else on Yip has so many advantages, including:
- Being online means it’s interactive
- You learn at your own pace
- You login and learn from wherever you want – your bedroom, your dining room, a coffee shop, in a park – wherever!
- You can learn along with other students from all over the world
- Our platform uses cutting-edge technology which means good connectivity
- You are a constant presence to your tutor – you never get ‘lost’ like can happen in a real-world class
And then there’s search engine optimization, or SEO. Whether you’re searching for things online or even choose to yourself become a tutor or ‘Yiper’ with us, SEO is invaluable. So, if you were to become a tutor, SEO would help visitors (i.e. prospective students) to find you via organic searches on a search engine such as Google.
SEO is fundamentally about ensuring that you rank as high as possible on Search Engine Results Pages, or ‘SERPs’. It’s a lot easier to master than it sounds! And it can do wonders for your online presence, whatever it might be.
In closing, consider these words by Chloe Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of films like Nomadland: “I was born and raised in China, Mandarin is my first language, and I definitely know America. I think that will be my strength, to try and bring the two worlds together.”
Perhaps you too can bridge your own worlds by learning Mandarin or any other skill that you’d like to pursue. After all, is there any greater gift than learning?
