by Xinhua writers Liang Junqian, Chen Shan

MONTEREY, the United States, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- On a sunny and windless Sunday, Celine Franklin and her parents drove over to join a Chinese cultural festival in Monterey in the U.S. state of California.

The 17-year-old Turkish-American girl, dressed in a floral embroidered blue blouse, stopped by a booth of a Chinese calligrapher and asked for her Chinese name "Yang Huizhong" written stroke by stroke on a small piece of white rice paper.

After the work was finished, she rushed over to show it to her parents and explained to them the meaning of the Chinese name she picked for herself. "Yang" is the surname, while "Huizhong" means bright and intelligent.

With a passion for the language and the people, Celine said she is "very stubborn" about her future career choice.

"I definitely would like to teach English in China or be a Chinese teacher in America. I would like to use Chinese in my career," she told Xinhua.

But her mother wants her daughter to become a doctor.

"I don't think there's a way to convince my mom. I will major in linguistics and she'll have to deal with it. She will probably not pay for my college," the girl said.

For the moment, she is an 11th grader at Carmel High School in the city of Carmel, California. After school, she teaches kids at a local youth center.

She chose to learn Chinese four years ago when many of her classmates opted for either Spanish or French. To her, Chinese learning brings forth a brand new experience.

In July, she went to central China's Zhengzhou City and volunteered to teach English at a summer camp for one month. She also traveled across China and visited a lot of historical sites, including the Great Wall which impressed her the most.

"It was so hot that after we finished walking one tiny section of the Great Wall, my leg started shaking and I didn't expect that you had to climb upstairs to get to actual walls," Celine said.

When Franklin came back from China, she not only completed 60 hours of community service required for her graduation, but also had a fun experience with a different culture. She encouraged her schoolmates to volunteer in China.

"I really enjoyed going to China and it was really fun. I got to interact with different cultures, talk to local people, meet a lot of friends and gain experience," she added.

FUN, CHALLENGING AND EYE-OPENING

Like Franklin, Caitlin Shepherd also saw value in learning Chinese. Having lived and studied in Asia and Europe, the second-year graduate student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) said learning a language can open one's eyes to understand the world in a different way.

Chinese language classes at MIIS use the content-based learning format. Shepherd and her 11 classmates meet twice a week for two-hour classes and they learn about classic Chinese works like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Tzu's Art of War, as well as legendary stories of the ancient Silk Road.

"We study these Chinese classics and bring them to the modern day. We're learning the Art of War right now, but we're talking about the midterm elections, business ventures and investment. We're talking about nuclear deterrence and naval development," she said.

Shepherd and her classmates study Chinese for different reasons. Some want to master Chinese to facilitate their research, some want to work as translators, while others pursue the language out of an interest in Taoism or Buddhism.

Shepherd and her friend Franklin are examples of students learning Chinese and loving it, even though learning all the stroke sequences of Chinese characters and working on four tones of spoken Chinese are difficult.

"It (Chinese learning) requires a lot more effort and commitment (than Latin alphabet-based languages)," said Franklin's Chinese language teacher Joyce Liu.

Liu teaches at Carmel High School and Carmel Middle School. "When my students write their college essays, they always say that they have persevered, and put hard work and time to grasp the language and culture. My students go to Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. They continue learning Chinese in college," she explained.

Now, she teaches altogether 80 students at four different levels. The principals of Joyce's schools along with community members have supported students' field trip to China and passionately joined in on different cultural activities at school.

LEARNING BRINGS UNDERSTANDING

U.S.-China relations have experienced ups and downs in recent years, but exchanges across the Pacific, especially the mutual understanding between these two peoples, continue strengthening bonds. Learning Chinese has become more popular in the United States.

The Modern Language Association of America (MLA), the country's principal professional association for scholars of language and literature, conducted a study on enrollments in the 15 most commonly taught languages other than English in U.S. higher education institutes between 1958 and 2016.

During the 58-year span, the percentage change for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean all exceed 8,000 percent. The Chinese language course enrollment increased 8,529 percent, from 615 in 1958 to 53,069 in 2016.

It comes as an encouraging sign that so many young Americans are learning Chinese language decades after China and the United States ended their estranged relationship.

"When I was growing up 20 years ago, Chinese was not a language offered at high school or college. It was certainly not a language that my parents would put me in a class," according to Jennifer Peck, a MIIS expert on language teaching and inter-cultural communication.

"But now is very different. Chinese is becoming more and more common to be offered at high school and college levels," she said.

"I think parents in California and especially in Silicon Valley who are aware of the tech boom in China are probably realizing their kids should learn Chinese if they're going to be successful in the future," Peck said.

Chinese language instruction is widespread within school systems in the United States, according to the National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report in 2017.

The West Coast holds the highest concentration of Chinese teaching and learning. California alone has a total of 108 (9.4 percent) schools that offer Chinese instruction and is home to 15.67 percent of all U.S. students enrolled in Chinese classes.

UNFLINCHING DETERMINATION

For years, MIIS has provided both academic and customized Chinese learning programs, offering language learning in a cultural context, which means that Chinese culture, history, and social etiquette are embedded in the language course.

Students here are of all ages and backgrounds, ranging from 20-year-old diplomats to 30-year-old businesspeople to 50-year-old dumpling lovers.

"Everyone has their own learning journey with the language. I'm interested in education and in doing research in China on cross-cultural education materials and curriculum design," said Shepherd, who majors in international education management.

For these Chinese language learners, the recent pause in China-U.S. tariff disputes is good news for both countries and the rest of the world.

During a dinner meeting in Argentina on Dec. 1, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, reached important consensus and agreed not to impose new additional tariffs.

"The trade problem between China and the U.S. really make me sad, because I feel that there is so much positive influence that can come out of the relationship," Shepherd said.

As growing numbers of Chinese and American youth study in each other's countries, they learn their respective languages and cultures, and develop the capacity to build mutual understanding and awareness.

Statistics show that the United States remains the top choice for Chinese students who want to study abroad.

Of the more than 1 million foreign students who enrolled at U.S. universities in the 2016-2017 academic year, about 35 percent were Chinese, up 6.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit based in New York City.

Meanwhile, the United States was the fourth-largest source of international students in China last year, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education.

"I hope we can use language education to bridge people together to reduce animosity and to bridge respects between people from across different cultures," Shepherd said with a radiant smile on her face.