About Mama Baby Mandarin
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!
At 30 days old, my mother handed me to a stewardess and sent me across the ocean to Taiwan. The whole family made the trek to the airport to receive me. As 阿公’s story goes, I arrived in a fruit basket. My grandparents raised me in the Beitou district of Taipei, impressively without the help of Baby Bjorn, Bugaboo, Huggies, a crib, or the other hundred “can’t live without” baby products. (GASP!) My early years were spent wandering through the morning market, exploring temples, scooping for tadpoles in the creek, going to see the giant sea turtles for sale, and riding on the gas tank of my uncle’s motorcycle.
Eventually, I returned to the US and began primary school speaking Taiwanese and very little, if any, English. Within 2 years I had caught up to my grade level in reading and writing. I devoured any book I found, even my sister’s Danielle Steel novels which we can all agree are inappropriate for a 7-year-old! Learning English will not be a struggle. This is the reason I put almost all my effort into teaching my children Mandarin.
Although I returned to Taiwan each year for the entire summer, I sadly did not learn to read and write Mandarin. Those days Beitou was a much smaller community of predominantly Taiwanese speakers. Children learned Mandarin in school but spoke Taiwanese at home and I did not have the opportunity to go to school in Taiwan. Nearly all the Mandarin I’ve picked up over the years is from watching television shows and movies.
When my son was born I was determined he would learn Chinese. In the beginning, my sentences were English jumbled with Mandarin words, but it was progress. In time I no longer needed to consult Google Translate. When my son started speaking he preferred Mandarin over English. What a proud mama I was then! Our family has since grown and our baby girl is now starting to speak Mandarin as well.
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.