Channel 2 story : Israelis studying Chinese

This Tuesday, arriving at Chinese class, we were informed by Lin that the class is going to be special. Aside from the fact that it's the last week of school, we were informed that we are about to have some visitors – reports from the Israeli extremely-popular channel 2. The reporters were doing a story on Chinese studies in Israel with the question with the stereotypical obvious answer – "Why are Israelis suddenly interested in studying Chinese?".

 The reporters were suppose to arrive at mid-lesson, but calling Lin up in while the class was taking place they kept delaying their arrival until 15 minutes before class ended. Lin, looking somewhat nervous but still energetic, went on to show the reporters how we do Chinese studies in Israel – pingponging questions and answers with the students (which she's only done in a different Spoken Chinese advanced class before) and doing the usual ritual of singing a Chinese KTV-Kareoke. Assaf, the class extrovert, came in to the middle to have a small dance, like in the Far-East Asia day (link1/link2) and we wrapped things up. The reporter wanted to ask Lin some questions, although she wasn't in the mood at all, and then Assaf and our second extrovert – David (link), sat down to answer their student questions.

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A quiet Saturday evening, not doing too much, I suddenly get a message from my sister going "fiLi! fiLi! they say there's going to be an section about Israelis studying Chinese". It took me about a minute to connect the two, and then I mass SMSed all I had on my list that might be interested in that and waited for it to come.

As expected from a 2 minute story, the main point was – Israelis want to learn Chinese since China is the next economical promise. Interviews were shown with various people talking about how important it is to "show them we're serious" and "prepare ourselves for business with them". Some young folks, including Assaf and David, mentioned combining Chinese studies with Business Administration or Finance, and there was a very brief demonstration of how much we don't understand China given by the officials in charge. We got to see Gadi and Solafa answering questions in Chinese, the Chinese class singing and clapping and A&D explaining why Chinese is a big challenge.

Just like a friend emailed me after the show – a good summary was a quote from the interview with Lin when the reporters asked – "Do you think studying Chinese is easy?". Lin responded with "Yeah, I think it's very easy for them", then she turns to the side and asks the students – "Right?" and then everybody shouts back – "NO!".