Thank you so much for your kind words, Barbara. Really appreciate this. I’ll check out Laurence Yep’s books since you speak highly of them. So glad to hear you’re friends with a Chinese. He sounds like a decent man. 🙂

My husband is a Serbian immigrant and after over 50 years here he still has trouble using articles and pronouncing certain consonants because of the difference in alphabets. I felt the same way as I studied his language. He still has trouble with English spelling, since his language is completely phonetic. Your mastery of two such different languages is probably very good for your brain.

I read and review many books for children and young adults, and I’ve much enjoyed those by Laurence Yep. His fiction and autobiography have helped me understand my Chinese friends better, as well as much of what part the Chinese have played in my own California history.

One of my close friends who used to frequent our home so often when he was in college that we gave him a key is now a prominent member of the Chinese community in Los Angeles. Only now I see how little I really knew about his own family’s leadership in that community and how much of Chinatown they owned. He never mentioned those things, since most of what he talked about was personal. I only found out when he grow up, his parents died, and he carried on with what they had started.

I’m impressed that you learned to speak Mandarin this way. But this is actually very smart — it encourages interaction and interaction encourages you to think and speak the language more effectively. Thank you for sharing your experience, Anne!