Chinese Language

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.

British producer Cameron Mackintosh will help stage Chinese-language versions of classic Broadway musicals such as "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon," a publicist for the producer said. The productions are part of an agreement with Chinese performing arts agency China Arts and Entertainment Group, which is affiliated with China's Ministry of Culture, according to the statement issued this week.

Carson Hom's family has run a thriving fortune cookie and almond cookie company in Los Angeles County for 35 years. And for much of that time, it was a business that required two languages: Cantonese, to communicate with employees and the Chinese restaurants that bought the cookies, and English, to deal with health inspectors, suppliers and accountants. But when Hom, 30, decided to start his own food import company, he learned that this bilingualism wasn't enough anymore.

Twenty-four young faces in the kindergarten class at Woodstock Elementary School watch intently as their teacher holds up a construction paper cut-out of a large red circle, and waits for them to identify the shape. Piece of cake for a roomful of savvy 5-year-olds, except that teacher Shin Yen is looking for the shape's name in Mandarin Chinese. It's the world's most widely spoken language, but one that's only beginning to surface in U.S. classrooms, especially at the elementary level.

Nov. 17, 1913: Los Angeles Police Chief Charles Sebastian placed a badge on Chinese immigrant Lung Yep, who "stepped from the comparative obscurity of a clerkship in Sing Fat's store into the authority of a star and a club," The Times reported. He became, the newspaper said, "the first Chinese ever to be so invested in the United States or in the entire Occident, so far as the police records of the continent show." His appointment followed an investigation of conditions in Chinatown.

Bursting in from recess, 15 children take their seats and face the woman they know as Teacher Yang. "What day is this?" she asks, in Mandarin Chinese. "Confucius' birthday!" the fifth-graders shout in Chinese. "Why do we celebrate Confucius' birthday?" "Because he's the greatest teacher in the history of China!" exclaims a brown-haired girl with decidedly European features. She too is speaking Mandarin.

John Woo's new Chinese-language historical epic will be shown in North American movie theaters later this year, marking the "Mission: Impossible II" director's first U.S. release in six years. Magnet Releasing said it has bought the American rights to "Red Cliff" and will release it this fall. Magnet Releasing is co-owned by Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, and Todd Wagner. "Red Cliff," about an ancient Chinese battle by the same name, is Hong Kong native Woo's first Chinese-language film since the 1992 action thriller "Hard-Boiled."

Re "Chinese factions' different strokes," Oct. 18 I find it shortsighted of each side to take the either/or position. Traditionalists clinging to the old ways are not facing the fact that a tremendous amount of business is done with mainland China. Supporters of the simplified form of writing are blinded by the present and are throwing away thousands of years of their heritage. Those who learned only traditional script will have a disadvantage doing business with the mainland.