Learning Chinese language helps Americans know different world

"In the in-dividing period since then until now whether I have either been a student, a diplomat, a business man, a foreign minister or a prime minister, is that China has been a common thing of my adult life, in all things I have done," he told the audience.

The National Chinese Language Conference is the largest annual gathering in the United States of teachers, administrators, and policymakers engaged in teaching Chinese language and culture. The meeting is co-organized by the College Board and Asia Society in collaboration with Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban).

The United States has the largest number of Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, with 100 and more than 360 ones respectively. More than 220,000 American students are studying Chinese in these institutes in 2014.

"The Confucius Institute is not just about language, it is about culture," David Coleman, president of the College Board, told Xinhua.

"The Confucius Institute and Confucius Classroom offer a model to build a trust (between China and America), because trust must be based on understanding. What a Confucius Institute does is that it invites students across this country to not only learn a language but to understand," Coleman said.

From 2013 to 2014, five new Confucius Institutes have been set up. They start to work with school districts around America to promote the learning of the Chinese language.

"The Chinese language and culture in America is growing very quickly. There is perhaps no relationship that would be more important in the future in our world than for China and the United States to begin to more deeply understand one and another," Coleman said. "We see that American students recognize that it is powerful for their future to do good work, to explore the world, to understand Chinese."

Apart from those educators who teach Chinese in Confucius Institutes or Confucius Classrooms, more and more common people in the United States are willing to learn and teach Chinese in the country.

Jessica Beinecke, a popular journalist in China for her online video program "OMG! Meiyu"(literally, "OMG! American language"), updates her video shows for teaching Chinese people American slang and culture everyday. Her daily online show has garnered over 40 million video views.