SHANGHAI — Kyle Rothstein stands out in a sea of Chinese faces not because he is an American teenager with curly red hair and clear blue eyes, but because he speaks Chinese. Fluent Chinese.
The visual and verbal double take is the handiwork of his father, Jay Rothstein, a prescient American businessman who put Kyle in a bilingual English-Mandarin school in San Francisco when he was 5. The elder Rothstein had read that if you don't learn to speak a foreign language by that age, you never really get it.
"I knew it wasn't going to be easy," said Rothstein, who at the time was traveling to China on business several times a year. "There were times when he was crying every day, asking, 'I am not Chinese -- why do I have to learn Chinese?' "
But the benefits soon became obvious. By the time he was 12, Kyle had met two American presidents, hobnobbed with countless Chinese dignitaries and appeared on four Chinese TV shows. Now 17, Kyle is living in China's most cosmopolitan city, finishing school and starring in a soon-to-be-released feature film, "Milk and Fashion," about an American kid growing up in China. His father is the producer.
"I rebelled at first, but now I am grateful that my dad pushed me," Kyle, a reedy teenager with Shirley Temple locks and a relatively reserved temperament more befitting an honor student than a budding actor, said as he sat in the cafeteria of his Shanghai high school. "Everything about me has changed because of the Chinese language. It's opened up so many doors that other people don't have."
Rothstein, a single dad who acknowledges that he has raised his son much like a stereotypical stage mom, says it was all part of his plan to give the boy the best possible preparation for the future.
"I wanted to give him a good life, to do distinguished things," said Rothstein, who gained custody of his son after he and his wife divorced when Kyle was 6; she visits about twice a year. "Now college admissions officers are interested in him and saying, 'He has such an exotic resume -- we want him.' They want international kids. It's a global world."
More Americans than ever are waking up to the possibility that Chinese is the language of the future. With China's fast rise as an economic powerhouse, the language, once considered obscure and difficult to learn, is being embraced by parents looking to give their children a leg up in the global economy.
