A Chinese auto company said on Sunday it had adopted Tai Shan, a much-loved panda that has just arrived in China from its birthplace in the United States, in a US$60,000 (S$85,308) corporate deal.

The animal arrived in southwestern Sichuan province on Friday from Washington – where its departure nearly five years after it was born at the National Zoo drew tears from the crowds – to join China’s panda-breeding programme.

Cao Guodong, deputy general manager of the Sichuan Auto Industry Group, said the firm, which makes hybrid cars, had decided to adopt Tai Shan to initiate an ‘environmental protection philosophy’ for the company. He denied the deal was for advertising purposes, but added the company would organise activities centered around Tai Shan at its businesses around China at key moments, such as the panda’s birthday.

‘Four hundred thousand yuan (60,000 dollars) is the basic fee, but that doesn’t include money we might donate in the future,’ he said.

Hen Yi, a spokesman for the Wolong panda base in Sichuan’s Bifengxia, where Tai Shan is currently staying, told AFP the panda would not be disrupted by the deal and would never be moved from its feeding centre.

Meanwhile, unaware of the excitement, Tai Shan, a male panda, was adapting well to life at the centre, but still had to get accustomed to its new Chinese handler, Mr Hen said. ‘He doesn’t understand either Chinese or English, but he needs to get familiar with the voice of his new handler,’ he said.

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China’s top universities could soon rival Oxford, Cambridge and the Ivy League, the president of Yale University has warned.

Professor Richard Levin, speaking to the Guardian on a trip to the UK, said Chinese institutions would rank in the world’s top 10 universities in 25 years’ time, squeezing out some of the west’s elite campuses.

At the moment, British universities dominate the top 10 rankings, with Cambridge coming second to Harvard, University College London fourth and Oxford and Imperial College London joint fifth. The rest of the top 15 are US universities. China’s highest-ranking institution is Tsinghua, at 49.

But the Chinese government now spends billions of yuan – at least 1.5% of its gross domestic product – on higher education with the aim of propelling its best institutions, such as the universities of Tsinghua and Peking, into the top slots, Levin said.

“In 25 years, only a generation’s time, these universities could rival the Ivy League,” said Levin, the Ivy League’s longest-tenured president. He was speaking before giving a lecture on the rise of Asia’s universities to the Royal Society in London on Monday evening.

Levin said: “China and India … seek to expand the capacity of their systems of higher education … and aspire simultaneously to create a limited number of world-class universities to take their places among the best. This is an audacious agenda, but China, in particular, has the will and resources that make it feasible. It has built the largest higher education sector in the world in merely a decade.”

China has more than doubled the number of its higher education institutions in the last decade from 1,022 to 2,263. More than 5 million Chinese students enrol on degree courses now, compared to 1 million in 1997.

Chinese scholars are increasingly leaving their posts in US and UK universities to return home, Levin said.

The growth of Chinese higher education comes as English university leaders fear they may not be able to maintain their world-class reputation for higher education, with savage government cuts of 950m pounds over the next three years.

Commenting on the cuts, Levin said it would be “a shame if the British government didn’t recognise the status of Oxford and Cambridge as global leaders”.

He pointed out that it had taken centuries for Harvard and Yale to match Oxford and Cambridge. And while China had a large pool of talent to draw on, it was currently seen as less attractive to scholars from across the world than the US and the UK, he said. China’s universities lack “multidisciplinary breadth” and “the cultivation of critical thinking”.

Levin said: “I don’t see the rise of Asia’s universities as threatening. Competition in education is a positive sum game. Increasing the quality of education around the world translates into better informed and more productive citizens.”

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JIUZHAIGOU, CHINA — By noon, the tour buses that ply the length of this U-shaped limestone valley are packed tight. Elbows are up. People are pushing.

“Are you going to walk?” someone hollers.

“Don’t bump!” comes the reply.

It’s a common scene in any major Chinese city, but here in northern Sichuan Province, 10 hours by bus from Chengdu, the crowds are surrounded by karst peaks and turquoise pools, not high-rise buildings and freeways.

Each day, tens of thousands of Chinese tourists board buses to visit the pine forests and mock-ethnic villages of Jiuzhaigou, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Admission costs 320 renminbi, or $47. For 25 renminbi more, visitors can rent a bejeweled, Tibetan-inspired costume and have their pictures taken by a local.

These sightseers, clad in Gore-Tex and Gucci, are fueling a boom in China’s domestic travel sector. Spurred by a mix of middle-class money, government support and interest in rediscovering China, the market is beating predictions and bucking global trends.

While the industry lost ground in Europe and the United States, China’s tourism sector posted a 9 percent jump in revenue 2009, to 1.26 trillion renminbi, thanks to domestic demand.

In 2010, total tourism revenue is expected to rise 14 percent, totaling 1.44 trillion renminbi, according to figures released Jan. 24 in state media reports.

“There is clearly an upward trend, a huge upward trend,” said Nancy Cockerell, a policy adviser at the World Travel and Tourism Council. “For the next 10 years, China will be leading the way.”

Though Chinese people have been on the move for centuries — as explorers, migrants and traders — leisure travel is relatively new to the People’s Republic. The post-Mao era afforded little time for holidays, and for most, money was scarce. The state regulated travel between provinces, so would-be wanderers needed papers and permission, in addition to cash.

As China’s economy began to gain momentum in the 1990s, the travel industry benefited. The number of domestic trips jumped 54 percent from 1996 to 2006, according to figures released by the China National Tourism Administration.

Higher incomes have driven up leisure travel, but the government has helped, too. As average incomes climbed, the state eased travel restrictions and increased the number of mandatory public holidays to 11 to drive demand.

Since 1999, Chinese workers have enjoyed “golden weeks,” a set of mandatory national holidays. There are now two per year, one held in autumn and one in winter.

The purpose is to get people spending — a strategy that seems to be working. During the National Day Golden Week holidays from Oct. 1 to Oct. 8 last year, 19.6 million tourists visited Sichuan Province alone, generating 7.7 billion renminbi in revenue, according to state media.

Nationally, tourism revenue has been climbing for more than a decade, and more people than ever are traveling.

The National Tourism Administration said domestic tourists had made 1.9 billion trips in 2009, an increase of 11 percent over the previous year, and generated 1 trillion renminbi of revenue, up 15 percent from the previous year.

But Ms. Cockerell of the World Travel and Tourism Council said the sector still had room to grow.

“For China, two billion trips is small,” she said. “When they start traveling like Americans, the numbers will be phenomenal.”

The world’s largest travel Web site, Tripadvisor, shares her optimism. In October, it said it had purchased Kuxun.cn, a Chinese flight and hotel search engine, as part of plans to invest $50 million in China through 2011.

Peripheral industries stand to benefit as well. With the rise of mass tourism comes the development of what Tim Winter, editor of “Asia on Tour: Exploring the Rise of Asian Tourism,” calls “travel culture.”

In China, travel culture means big money, he said: “People want the travel uniform; they want the gear.”

For sightseers who want more gear, the shops are ready to help. Visitors to the gift shop near the main cafeteria of the Jiuzhaigou National Park can purchase fox fur stoles (1,400 renminbi), faux fur hats (80 renminbi) or plastic back scratchers (30 renminbi).

Outside the park gates, rows of shops sell high-end travel equipment, including brand-name jackets, digital cameras and the latest in luggage.

Suitably attired, visitors to this once remote region can choose from dozens of hotels, including a Sheraton and an Intercontinental. At night, charter buses ferry guests to Tibetan shows, where, for about $25, they are treated to live music, dancing and food.

Leading the spending spree are China’s young urbanites. Overworked, wealthy and worldly, they have the means to travel and the desire to get away from city life.

“There are skyscrapers everywhere in Shanghai, but here there is natural landscape,” said Allen Zhang, a newlywed touring the park with his wife, Christine Xiong.

“Travel is a completely new lifestyle for us,” he added. “My father’s generation didn’t have the opportunity to travel.”

Mr. Zhang does, so he and Ms. Xiong flew to Sichuan to shoot their wedding pictures at Swan Lake, an algae-green pool famous for its glassy surface.

She stood by the water’s edge in a gauzy, white wedding gown; he beheld his bride through the lens of a tripod-mounted digital SLR.

They plan to travel every season, they said, and explore the country’s far reaches. “China is just a pretty, beautiful place,” Mr. Zhang said.

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A photographer shoots up close a replica Terracotta warrior coated with chocolate powder during a press event for the World Chocolate Wonderland theme park in Beijing, China, on Friday.

Chocoholics, rejoice!  A chocolate theme park opens next week in Beijing that will feature life-size replicas of the Terracotta warriors and a slice of the Great Wall of China.

The 215,000-square-foot “chocolate wonderland” opens Jan. 29 near the Olympic stadium.

“Even though chocolate in China is not as popular as it is in Western countries, we hope to promote the chocolate culture and market in China,” Zheng Yaoting, general manager of the firm running the park, tells the Global Times.

The newspaper says the chocolate items will be displayed at five temperature-controlled indoor areas and two outdoor sites.

Park organizers hope to lure a million visitors before April, when warm weather can be downright discouraging for chocolate products. It will reopen in January with new displays.

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WASHINGTON — Thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news for a nation that needs more linguists to conduct its global business and diplomacy.

But another contrary trend has educators and policy makers abuzz: a rush by schools in all parts of America to offer instruction in Chinese.

Some schools are paying for Chinese classes on their own, but hundreds are getting some help. The Chinese government is sending teachers from China to schools all over the world — and paying part of their salaries.

At a time of tight budgets, many American schools are finding that offer too good to refuse.

In Massillon, Ohio, south of Cleveland, Jackson High School started its Chinese program in the fall of 2007 with 20 students and now has 80, said Parthena Draggett, who directs Jackson’s world languages department.

“We were able to get a free Chinese teacher,” she said. “I’d like to start a Spanish program for elementary children, but we can’t get a free Spanish teacher.”

(Jackson’s Chinese teacher is not free; the Chinese government pays part of his compensation, with the district paying the rest.)

No one keeps an exact count, but rough calculations based on the government’s survey suggest that perhaps 1,600 American public and private schools are teaching Chinese, up from 300 or so a decade ago. And the numbers are growing exponentially.

Among America’s approximately 27,500 middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1 percent, from 1997 to 2008, according to the survey , which was done by the Center For Applied Linguistics , a research group in Washington, and paid for by the federal Education Department .

“It’s really changing the language education landscape of this country,” said Nancy C. Rhodes, a director at the center and co-author of the survey.

Other indicators point to the same trend. The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Chinese, introduced in 2007, has grown so fast that it is likely to pass German this year as the third most-tested A.P. language, after Spanish and French, said Trevor Packer, a vice president at the College Board.

“We’ve all been surprised that in such a short time Chinese would grow to surpass A.P. German,” Mr. Packer said.

A decade ago, most of the schools with Chinese programs were on the East and West Coasts. But in recent years, many schools have started Chinese programs in heartland states, including Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest, Texas and Georgia in the South, and Colorado and Utah in the Rocky Mountain West.

“The mushrooming of interest we’re seeing now is not in the heritage communities, but in places that don’t have significant Chinese populations,” said Chris Livaccari, an associate director at the Asia Society.

America has had the study of a foreign language grow before, only to see the bubble burst. Many schools began teaching Japanese in the 1980s, after Japan emerged as an economic rival. But thousands have dropped the language, the survey found.

Japanese is not the only language that has declined. Thousands of schools that offered French, German or Russian have stopped teaching those languages, too, the survey found.

To prepare the survey, the Center for Applied Linguistics sent a questionnaire to 5,000 American schools, and followed up with phone calls to 3,200 schools, getting a 76 percent response rate.

The results, released last year, confirmed that Spanish was taught almost universally. The survey found that 88 percent of elementary schools and 93 percent of middle and high schools with language programs offered Spanish in 2008.

The overall decline in language instruction was mostly due to its abrupt decline in public elementary and middle schools; the number of private schools and public high schools offering at least one language remained stable from 1997 to 2008.

The survey said that a third of schools reported that the federal No Child Left Behind law, which since 2001 has required public schools to test students in math and English, had drawn resources from foreign languages.

Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.

Also stoking the interest has been a joint program by the College Board and Hanban , a language council affiliated with the Chinese Education Ministry, that since 2006 has sent hundreds of American school superintendents and other educators to visit schools in China, with travel costs subsidized by Hanban. Many have started Chinese programs upon their return.

Since 2006, Hanban and the College Board have also sent more than 325 volunteer Chinese “guest teachers” to work in American schools with fledgling programs and paying $13,000 to subsidize each teacher’s salary for a year. Teachers can then renew for up to three more years.

The State Department has paid for a smaller program — the Teachers of Critical Languages Program — to bring Chinese teachers to schools here, with each staying for a year.

In the first two years of its Chinese program, the Jackson District in Ohio said it had provided its guest teacher housing, a car and gasoline, health insurance and other support worth about $26,000. This year, the district is paying a more experienced Chinese guest teacher $49,910 in salary and other support, in addition to the $13,000 in travel expenses he receives from Hanban, bringing his compensation into rough parity with Ohio teachers.

Ms. Draggett visited China recently with a Hanban-financed delegation of 400 American educators from 39 states, and she came back energized about Jackson’s Chinese program, she said.

“Chinese is really taking root,” she said. Starting this fall, Jackson High will begin phasing out its German program, she said.

Founders of the Yu Ying charter school in Washington, where all classes for 200 students in prekindergarten through second grade are taught in Chinese and English on alternate days, did not start with a guest teacher when it opened in the fall of 2008.

“That’s great for many schools, but we want our teachers to stay,” said Mary Shaffner, the school’s executive director.

Instead, Yu Ying recruited five native Chinese speakers living in the United States by advertising on the Internet. One is Wang Jue, who immigrated to the United States in 2001 and graduated from theUniversity of Maryland.

After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like “I want lunch” and “I’m angry” in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.

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BEIJING — China’s top leaders bid a final and sombre farewell Wednesday to the eight nationals who died in last week’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, where four of them had served as UN peacekeepers.

In a ceremony broadcast on state television, the eight were buried at the Babaoshan cemetery in western Beijing, where revolutionary heroes and the ruling Communist Party’s top officials are laid to rest.

The nine members of the Politburo standing committee — the party’s top leadership, wearing black suits and white paper flowers in their buttonholes — filed past the coffins draped with the national flag.

President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and the other leaders also saluted family members of the victims.

Beyond the four peacekeepers, the four others killed had just arrived in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince as part of a delegation to hold talks with UN officials when the 7.0-magnitude quake struck.

Between 100,000 and 200,000 people are thought to have died.

The bodies of the Chinese victims were given a hero’s homecoming on Tuesday in Beijing, and they were officially declared “revolutionary martyrs.”

State television and newspapers have devoted non-stop coverage to the victims, and kung fu star Jackie Chan has even recorded a song in tribute to them with Chinese singer Tan Jing entitled “Send You Home”.

China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council that does not have diplomatic relations with Haiti, has nevertheless been present in the country since 1997 with a trade bureau and is active in the UN peacekeeping force.

The Caribbean country is one of 23 nations that still officially recognises the self-ruled island of Taiwan, where the nationalists fled in 1949 after the communist victory in a civil war on the mainland.

China has sent a 60-strong rescue team to Haiti and allocated 30 million yuan (4.4 million dollars) in aid.

On Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu angrily denied accusations that Chinese rescuers were searching only for Chinese nationals missing in Port-au-Prince as “false” and “made out of ulterior motives.”

“The Chinese rescue team departed China immediately after the quake. They not only found the bodies of the Chinese peacekeepers, they also found the bodies of UN officers in Haiti and many others,” Ma told reporters.

“These actions are not selfish and brook no accusations. The accusers should be accused,” he said, after media reports about China’s contribution to the humanitarian operation in Haiti.

The original text is from: AFP: China mourns eight ‘martyrs’ killed in Haiti quake.

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Lingo Media Corporation (TSX VENTURE: LM)(OTCBB: LMDCF) (”Lingo Media”) a leader in online and print-based English language learning products is pleased to announce that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Speak2Me Inc. (”Speak2Me”), a state-of-the-art online English language learning community, has achieved its 1,000,000th registered user.

Michael Kraft, President & CEO of Lingo Media, commented, “We are delighted and gratified by the response to our www.speak2me.cn portal. Having achieved this milestone, we look forward to the accelerated growth that normally follows this level of user uptake. This success further reinforces our brand strength in China. The decade long publishing presence has transitioned well to digital media in our quest to advance English learning across China.”

About Speak2Me

Speak2Me (www.speak2me.com/advertising) is an online English language learning community that incorporates Lingo Media’s proven pedagogy with fun, interactive lesson modules to address the rapidly growing need for spoken English worldwide. Speak2Me’s groundbreaking service uses proprietary speech recognition technology to teach spoken English online through more than 350 targeted lessons that engage users in interactive conversations with a virtual teacher. A unique social-networking infrastructure that allows students to form study groups and offers contests, prizes and other incentives, creates a learning environment that engenders cooperation and competition, just as in a conventional classroom. Speak2Me’s patent-pending Conversational Advertising(TM) platform and premium content development services allow Speak2Me to provide its innovative offering to end-users at no cost. Speak2Me is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lingo Media Corporation (TSX VENTURE: LM)(OTCBB: LMDCF). For more information about Speak2Me and its business offerings, please visit www.speak2me.com/advertising.

About Lingo Media (TSX VENTURE: LM)(OTCBB: LMDCF)

Lingo Media Corporation (www.lingomedia.com) is a diversified online and print-based education products and services corporation focused on English language learning (”ELL”) on an international scale through its Lingo Learning Inc. subsidiary, a print-based publisher of ELL programs in China, Speak2Me (www.speak2me.com/advertising), an online ELL community, and Parlo, which today is an integrated language and cultural immersion portal (www.parlo.com). Lingo Media has formed successful relationships with key government and industry organizations, establishing a strong presence in China’s education market of 300 million students. The Company continues to broaden its presence in China as well as other major English language learning markets, to provide access to world-class English learning solutions on a global scale.

Portions of this press release may include “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of securities laws. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and involve certain risks and uncertainties. Actual results may vary materially from management’s expectations and projections and thus readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Certain factors that can affect the Company’s ability to achieve projected results are described in the Company’s filings with the Canadian and United States securities regulators available on www.sedar.com or www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml.

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE

Contacts:
For Lingo Media
Michael Kraft
President & CEO
416 927 7000 ext. 23 or Toll Free Tel: 866 927 7011 ext 23
416 927 1222 (FAX)
investor@lingomedia.com
To learn more, visit www.lingomedia.com

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Four Manalapan High School students and science teacher Heather Sullivan have returned from a 15-day trip to China, where they studied kung fu at a martial arts school, rode in rickshaws, and scaled the Great Wall of China.

The all-expense paid trip was organized by Discovery Student Adventures, the Discovery Channel’s new division that coordinates international travel for students in grades 5-12.

Sullivan and two other teachers were chosen from more than 170 educator applicants nationwide to pilot the program’s excursion to China. Each teacher was asked to select four students to experience the adventure as well.

Sullivan chose students Cory Bolotsky, 17, Kim Gennaro, 17, Caitlyn Silk, 17, and Drew Regino, 16. The other two teachers and eight students were from Wisconsin and California.

The Manalapan students are all starting their senior year of high school this week.

Sullivan applied for the trip because of her involvement in the Discovery Educator Network, which connects teachers who are passionate about integrating technology into the classroom to other educators.

“I never believed I would get picked to go abroad,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t tell anyone else that I applied for the trip either. Once I found out we were picked in March, things started happening very quickly. I had to choose which students I wanted to bring, ask their parents’ permission, and secure our passports and visas.”

Sullivan said Bolotsky, Gennaro, Silk and Regino were selected because they are good ambassadors for Manalapan and for America. They are confident, well-spoken, and able to absorb and communicate their cultural experiences with others, she said.

As part of the pilot program, the students were required to use the Internet to write daily about their activities, using blogs and Twitter, a microblogging service.

Silk blogged, ” … We made dumplings in different shapes … I can’t wait to show everyone my cooking skills when I get home!”

The students’ blogs and tweets can still be read at http://dsachina.blogspot.com.

Bolotsky concurred, saying, “Chinese food in China is nothing like Chinese food in America.”

The students said their most memorable moments including sampling duck brain and scorpion.

“Scorpion tastes like a crunchy french fry,” Regino reminisced.

Other culturally enlightening experiences included visiting the “Bird’s Nest,” which was the Olympic Stadium that played host to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; experiencing a day in the life of a Shaolin monk; and visiting the home of a Chinese family to learn about culture and calligraphy.

The students also learned how to sing the song “Shaolin, Shaolin” in Chinese and presented it to their kung fu instructors and warrior monks.

The guests from the United States were surprised as to how different the Chinese education system is from the American education system. After visiting a school, the Americans learned that most Chinese students attend boarding school year-round and only return home for a spring holiday.

“I feel really grateful for my education … that I get such a good education,” Silk said.

Bags have been unpacked and passports have been put away, but the students said their experiences in the Far East will stay with them forever.

Their teacher, Sullivan, said, “I have much more legitimacy when teaching 21st century skills in my classes. Anywhere you can go outside of your own comfort zone helps you. When you understand more, you can share better.”

Gennaro agreed with Sullivan, saying, “I appreciate everything I have more now. I’m much more culturally aware.”

The students want to share their enthusiasm about their trip and Chinese culture with others. They encourage any school or group that is interested in hearing about their trip to contact Sullivan at hsullivan@frhsd.com to schedule a presentation.

Sullivan said, “We want people to know that if you keep connections with others who are excited about the same things you are, you can go far.”

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This fall, Texas State students will be able to take Mandarin Chinese for academic credit as the Department of Languages unveils its newest course listings.

The classes are made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to Texas State’s Center for International Studies. The grant is in support of courses with an emphasis on Southeast Asia and China.

Mandarin Chinese is spoken by one-fifth of the world’s population and functions as the official language of the People’s Republic of China.

“Mandarin Chinese is a language of the future, given the fast development of the Chinese economy,” said Jennifer Ching-hui Hsiao, who will instruct the classes. “By learning Mandarin Chinese, students will gain access to a world of international business; international relations; Chinese art, history and culture; Eastern philosophy; martial arts; natural wonders; fine cuisine; cool tattoos and much more.”

The three courses to be offered include Beginning Chinese I (Chinese 1410), Beginning Chinese II (Chinese 1420), and Intermediate Chinese (Chinese 2310).

In each course, listening, speaking, reading, and writing will be integrated with innovative instructional technology and Chinese culture. For example, Chinese character strokes will be demonstrated through video clips to assist students’ recognition and writing, and Chinese typing will be introduced through free downloadable software. Cultural activities will introduce Chinese festivals, such as Moon Festival and Chinese New Year.

After the successful completion of Chinese 1410, students should be able to correctly pronounce any Chinese character in the written Pinyin. They will have accumulated 350 Chinese vocabulary words and know something of Chinese culture and etiquette.

Chinese 1420 (prerequisite Chinese 1410) continues the first year of study and introduces 350 more characters.

Chinese 2310 (prerequisite Chinese 1420 or an acceptable score from a placement test) will provide advanced training in four Chinese language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Another 350 Chinese characters will be introduced.

Course instructor Hsiao is a doctoral candidate in foreign language education at the University of Texas. She has taught Chinese to college-level students in the United States for more than five years.

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