VV o n g B a
09-05-2006, 01:00 PM
wonder if this happened w/ japanese in the 80s...
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In demand in America: Chinese au pairs
In a motel conference room last week in Connecticut, 167 young women from 22 countries received a tutorial in catering to the needs of the affluent American child.
(Lesson 1: Turn off the television set.)
Many of the women were German. But two drew particular attention, Kunyi Li, 23, and Man Zhang, 24, among the first au pairs from China.
Their services are in great demand, in part because so many Americans have adopted baby girls from China. Driving the need more aggressively is the desire among ambitious parents to ensure their children's worldliness, as such parents assume that China's expanding influence will make Mandarin the sophisticates' language decades hence.
"Our clientele is middle and upper middle class," said William Gertz, chairman of the American Institute for Foreign Study, which oversees Au Pair in America. "They see something really happening, and they don't want to be left behind."
The last two years have seen an astonishing increase in the number of American parents wishing to employ Mandarin-speaking nannies, difficult to find in the United States and even harder to obtain from China.
Au Pair in America, the 20-year-old agency that sponsored the two young women in Connecticut, had received no requests for Chinese au pairs until 2004, said Ruth Ferry, the program director.
Since then, it has had 1,400.
The agency said it expected to bring 200 more au pairs to this country before the end of 2007, and other companies in the business are beginning to recruit in China, all taking advantage of relaxed standards for cultural-exchange visas for Chinese.
http://iht.com/articles/2006/09/05/news/aupairs.php
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In demand in America: Chinese au pairs
In a motel conference room last week in Connecticut, 167 young women from 22 countries received a tutorial in catering to the needs of the affluent American child.
(Lesson 1: Turn off the television set.)
Many of the women were German. But two drew particular attention, Kunyi Li, 23, and Man Zhang, 24, among the first au pairs from China.
Their services are in great demand, in part because so many Americans have adopted baby girls from China. Driving the need more aggressively is the desire among ambitious parents to ensure their children's worldliness, as such parents assume that China's expanding influence will make Mandarin the sophisticates' language decades hence.
"Our clientele is middle and upper middle class," said William Gertz, chairman of the American Institute for Foreign Study, which oversees Au Pair in America. "They see something really happening, and they don't want to be left behind."
The last two years have seen an astonishing increase in the number of American parents wishing to employ Mandarin-speaking nannies, difficult to find in the United States and even harder to obtain from China.
Au Pair in America, the 20-year-old agency that sponsored the two young women in Connecticut, had received no requests for Chinese au pairs until 2004, said Ruth Ferry, the program director.
Since then, it has had 1,400.
The agency said it expected to bring 200 more au pairs to this country before the end of 2007, and other companies in the business are beginning to recruit in China, all taking advantage of relaxed standards for cultural-exchange visas for Chinese.
http://iht.com/articles/2006/09/05/news/aupairs.php