American girl Claire Fuschi had never dreamed of hosting a conference in front of an audience of 1,300, let alone hosting the conference in Mandarin Chinese.
Fuschi, 16, a sophomore at Chicago's Walter Payton College Prep High School, was selected to host the opening ceremony of the three-day 9th National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC) held on Thursday in Chicago, the U.S. state of Illinois.
In a red dress and high-heel shoes, Fuschi looked confident and elegant on the stage. "On behalf of all the American students learning Chinese, I would like to thank our Chinese teachers. Thank you for all the hard work," she said in fluent Putonghua, or standard Mandarin Chinese.
Hours before the ceremony, Fuschi, or Fang Tingting, a Chinese name adopted by her, was busy preparing for the speech at the Confucius Institute in Chicago, which was located on the first floor of Fuschi's school.
Word by word, Fuschi followed her teacher Jane Lu's instruction carefully. "It is the first time I'll be a host, let alone host in Chinese, I feel very nervous," Fuschi, or Fang told Xinhua, with sparkles of excitement in her eyes.
Fuschi, who has been learning Chinese for almost 11 years, is among the 120 students at the high school who choose to learn Chinese as their foreign language in public schools. In the greater Chicago area, the number of students who enroll to learn Chinese has reached 13,000 this year.
Lu, who is also the director of the Confucius Institute in Chicago, noted that the institute was the first one in the United States that primarily focuses on Chinese language teaching for American students in public elementary and high schools.
When Fuschi was at her first grade in elementary school, her mother got her enrolled in a Chinese language class. "My family was very supportive. Since then, I've always loved learning Chinese," said Fuschi, adding that she hoped to use the language in her future job.
"The number of students learning Chinese have boomed since the institute first opened in 2006," Lu said. "Some kids are learning out of pure interest; others, especially their parents, think the language can be an important skill for future career."
Lu's words were echoed by many other educators attending the Chinese Language Conference. Josette Sheeran, President and CEO of Asia Society, believed that U.S.-China trade has become a major factor that boosts the heat of Chinese language learning in the United States.
"Bilateral trade between the U.S. and China has grown by 30 billion dollars each year. In 1992, when China first sent its diplomat to the WTO, the entire U.S.- China trade is only 30 billion dollars. This is an extraordinary relationship with great potential," said Sheeran at Thursday's opening ceremony.
For the past ten years, Asia Society has accomplished partnership with the Confucius Institute in building Chinese language learning course network in 100 districts and 28 states in the United States, reaching as many as 400,000 American kids.
"Now is China's moment in the world to emerge, and the language is key to understand not only China's today, but also China's history, and the way it thinks," Sheeran said.
For Fuschi, other than using Chinese in future job, the more pressing task on her to-do list is to pay a visit to China next year.
The exchange trip Fuschi will attend next summer is co-organized by the school and the Confucius Institute. Since it was founded in 2006, the institute has invited more than 7,500 American presidents, principals and teachers to visit China; and sponsored more than 11,500 American high school students on their summer camp tour in China.
"I'm very excited about the trip. I expect to learn a lot, be impressed by the sites and be able to talk to people in Chinese," said Fuschi.
Steven Koch, Deputy Mayor of Chicago, referred students like Fuschi as the "ambassadors" that bridge cultures and communities.
"We are tremendously proud of our Chicago public school students who are doing the important, sometimes difficult work of learning Chinese language and culture," said Koch.
"They are going to be future ambassadors of Chicago to China, and bring together the ties that we all know are very much important," he said.
