GYA16: Chun Shui Tang and Asian Pacific Cultural Day 春水堂和亞太文化節

Itinerary: looking for tutors, Chun Shui Tang, 中山地下街, Asian Pacific Cultural Day, sushi boat

The children and I had a wonderful mindful day together.  Well, at least the first half.  Then they got distracted by the cultural day events.  Still, it was really nice that we actually paid attention to each other.

I had a little talk with Thumper the other day about how she needs to let me know if she doesn’t agree with whatever is on her work plan and not passive aggressively choose not to do them.  She’s been great about learning herself the last two days.  I spent the time talking to Chinese tutors.  Astroboy, on the other hand, spent the morning eating breakfast and snacks while I was on the phone.

Sigh.

So yes, by now it’s lunch time and we headed out to 中正 MRT station.  Shin Kong Mitsukoshi is right outside Exit 2 and we went to eat at the Chen Shui Tang, which is the other restaurant that purports to have invented bubble tea.

I was mighty disappointed by the restaurant because they did not have a big selection of snack type food like Han Lin.  The bubble tea was good yes but otherwise not worth going back.  Fleur says there are better branches with more food selection.

Now that I had escaped the house, I didn’t want to go home, so the children and I strolled down 中山地下街 (Zhong Shan Underground Shopping street) to Taipei Train Station.  Apparently I had my shopping streets mixed up.  If I’d walked the other direction I would have seen the book vendors and other exciting booths.  But the one connecting to the train station is a bit tame.  Though I did manage to buy my $100 umbrella and $100 Kindle charger.

My favorite part of the day was coming across the Asian Pacific Cultural Day at the train station.  I love totally random stuff like this.  The children sat by the side stage and watched performances from Vietnam and Malaysia and afterwards we walked around the country booths.  They had a ton of fun playing a jumping game at the New Zealand booth and winning prizes.  Lastly, we got some Henna art tattoos on their hand at the India booths.

I asked Thumper what countries we’re going to look up in our little flag book after we get home and she had that little sparkle in her eyes when she recited all the countries she heard about today.

The plan to cook dinner at home went by the way side and we went up to second floor of the main hall to look for food.  Tons of Japanese restaurants with long lines.  So we ended up at a sushi boat place that had pretty decent sushi at pretty good prices.  ($70/plate for most stuff)

All in all a very good day.  I probably need one day a week with the children by ourselves.  They’re so busy playing with their friends I don’t get to talk to them much when we go out.

Hiring a Chinese Tutor

In any case, tutors.  What I did was Google 家教 and came across 3 websites that does tutor matching: Tutor 104, and Tutor 1111.   I put my info in 2 and wow, within minutes I was getting tons of emails and 1 text and 2 cold calls.  It’s crazy.  My only advice is to know exactly what you’re looking for before you list.  By that I mean, how often, how long, what you want them to teach.

Of course, I didn’t and only realized what I wanted AFTER.  1.5 hours, twice a week, composition 作文 for the big kids and zhuyin for the little one.  I had interesting talks with 2 tutors who had completely different views about composition in Taiwan, which I found odd.   After talking to them, I realized I also needed a tutor who understood the difference between Chinese and English writing.

It was my understanding that in general Chinese writing tends to be more in circles rather than the straight, topic + 3 supporting statement type of writing.  This type of writing is more scientific which makes sense given Western history.  I asked about book reports or little research reports (like one on the moon for example) or diaries, which is the type of writing we would need homeschooling, other than creative writing, which I know they do tons of.

One tutor said, children don’t learn about research type writing.  They do creative writing on specific topics and book reports 閱讀報告 where they have to write about what they learn and also what they think about it.  But otherwise, though they don’t teach research style, it’s fine because if Chinese writing is verbose, it’s easy for students to cut it down into an organized format when they have to do Western research style in college.

Another tutor says the writing style is actually much similar to Western writing style.   You still have to organize it.  With this tutor, who also taught Taipei American School kids children and lived in China for 10 years, I also got some interesting perspectives on Chinese learning for Taiwan/China/bilingual kids.  Her own kid knows pinyin and zhuyin because that is the trend.

Basically, after talking to these two, it feels like Chinese writing as I thought isn’t quite there.  The only thing the tutors agree on is that writings by student are worse than before.  (Hmm…do they just all say that cuz they’re tutors?)

The good thing is, I talked to a 3rd tutor who majored in Chinese 2 days later, who actually could tell me the difference.  So now i’m hiring her to teach me so I can teach the kids when I get back.   We will try sample classes this Friday.  As for rates, they’re all over the place, with the website quoting $250 as base but the first tutor quoted me $1000-$1200/hr for 3 kids.

The prices all seem to be negotiable. So it’s good to have an idea of what you’re willing to pay.  My non-scientific feeling is it should be 1/3 to 1/5 of US tutoring prices.