Taiwan is home to my happy childhood memories. It’s a place I love and celebrate. Learning Mandarin is so meaningful to me because I want our children to be able to communicate with my family. I created this blog to share and exchange ideas with other parents and to build a supportive community where we can all learn Chinese together. 媽媽寶寶學中文 translates to mama and baby learn Chinese and as the blog name suggests, I am learning Chinese with my children.
Currently, I work for a global online education company focusing on language learning for children. I enjoy using my experience to create worksheets and learning materials to share. Hopefully, this will save you time for more important things, like reading Chinese books to your kids. If you have an idea I could help you with, send me an email. I would love to collaborate and create more ways to learn Chinese.
Follow my blog to learn more about Mama Baby Mandarin.
Hello, I’m Jeanne!
When I was just 30 days old, my mother handed me to a stewardess and sent me across the ocean to Taiwan. The whole family made the trip to the airport to welcome me. According to 阿公, I arrived in a fruit basket. My grandparents raised me in the Beitou district of Taipei — impressively, without the help of a Baby Bjorn, Bugaboo stroller, Huggies, a crib, or the other hundred “must-have” baby products. (Gasp!)
My early years were spent wandering through the morning markets, exploring temples, scooping tadpoles from the creek, checking out giant sea turtles for sale, and riding on the gas tank of my uncle’s motorcycle.
Eventually, I returned to the U.S. and started primary school speaking Taiwanese — and very little, if any, English. Within two years, I had caught up to my grade level in reading and writing. I devoured any book I could find, even my sister’s Danielle Steel novels (which, we can all agree, were wildly inappropriate for a seven-year-old!). Learning English was never a struggle for me, and that’s exactly why I put almost all my effort into teaching my children Mandarin.
Although I returned to Taiwan every summer, I sadly never learned to read or write Mandarin. At the time, Beitou was a smaller, mostly Taiwanese-speaking community. Children learned Mandarin in school but spoke Taiwanese at home, and I never had the opportunity to attend school in Taiwan. Most of the Mandarin I’ve picked up over the years has come from watching television shows and movies.
When my son was born, I was determined that he would learn Chinese. At first, my sentences were a jumble of English mixed with Mandarin words, but it was a start. Over time, I no longer needed to consult Google Translate. When my son began speaking, he preferred Mandarin over English, and I was one proud mama! Since then, our family has grown, and now our baby girl is starting to speak Mandarin too.
Our Family Background
My husband is American and speaks a little French and Italian. I am Taiwanese-American and grew up speaking Taiwanese. I am learning Mandarin with our two children. Our goal is that our children learn Mandarin and Italian. We currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area.