Jim Rogers’s daughter shows her Mandarin chops in Singapore

Jim Rogers’s daughter shows her Mandarin chops in Singapore

Xinhua and Staff Reporter, 2013-04-19

Happy Rogers recites Tang poetry in Singapore. (Internet photo)

Happy Rogers, the nine-year-old daughter of American investor Jim Rogers, showed off her proficiency in Mandarin Chinese at an event in Singapore on Wednesday.

The student of Nanyang Primary School recited a poem by Li Qiao, a poet who lived during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

Although it is common for young Chinese language learners to recite ancient poems, Happy’s near native fluency won a round of applause from her Singaporean audience. “I actually haven’t studied it. I just picked it up listening to native speakers,” the girl said in Chinese in response to a question from her father.

Her five-year-old sister Baby Bee also showed off her language skills by singing nursery rhymes in Chinese.Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s education minister, said at the event on Wednesday that the girls’ performance was a huge success and promoted the city state’s bilingual education.

Rogers said he hired a Chinese-speaking governess for Happy when she was born and then moved to Singapore so that his daughters could be bilingual. “In my view, the best skill that I can give to my children, born in 2003 and 2008, is to speak fluent Mandarin, and I think they qualify so far. I want them to know Asia, not just be able to speak the language. They certainly have to know China, we spend as much time as we can in the country,” he said.

Singapore has adopted a policy to encourage bilingual education, with students asked to, apart from English as the official working language, learn their respective tongues as a second language.

The inaugural China-Quotient Teachers’ Forum was jointly organized by Business China and the Pioneer Junior College to help teachers understand the forces and factors shaping the rise of China and its relevance to Singapore. An educators’ resources package on China for teachers and students of upper secondary and pre-university level was also launched Wednesday.

Business China is a non-profit organization launched in 2007 by Singapore’s former minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew and China’s then-premier Wen Jiabao to nurture bilingual and bicultural talents and develop a cultural and economic bridge linking the world and China.

Rogers said he expected Singapore to have a competitive advantage in the future with its population fluent in both English and Chinese.

The renowned investor said he first visited China on motorcycle in 1984 and has made numerous visits back to the country. “Since 1984, I have realized that, as an American, everything that I had been taught about China was inaccurate,” he said.