Speaker - Ms Meichun Jiao

A Little Mandarin was the title of the talk given to the Rotary Club of South Queensferry on Thursday 15th January. The speaker was Merchun Jiao who is currently teaching basic Chinese at the Royal High School in Edinburgh on a scheme sponsored by the Chinese government. Merchun was a guest of Rotarian Morag McCallum who also teaches languages there and has worked at a school in China. After some basic facts about China and the north central region where she lives, Merchun  taught the capacity audience several simple phrases to allow a very basic conversation in Mandarin. After some practice, everyone could say Hello, How are you?  and give their name - quite an achievement considering the club was the largest (and oldest) class Merchun had taught! The talk concluded with questions from the floor. A surprising number of Rotarians had visited China on business or on holiday, which prompted an interesting discussion on how considerably China had changed over recent years. Merchun was introduced by Allan Smith. Stuart Ridge proposed the vote of thanks which was warmly endorsed by the audience.