橋 to the future

Michael directed this to my attention the other day and it has now made its way into my beloved Taipei Times.

Essentially, the former governor of Utah, who was appointed as the ambassador to China by Obama in part to neutralize him as a threat for the Presidency, has now stepped down in order to pave the way to seek the Republican nomination.

I know very little about Huntsman's politics and am not the person to tell you about that anyway. Everything that I know about him was from surfing online, and what stuck out to me is that he speaks both Mandarin and Taiwanese, which he learned as a missionary in Taiwan twenty years ago. Also, he has seven children, including two adopted girls, one from China and one from India.

I'm suspending judgment until I get a better idea of who he is, and it's too early to say much anyway. But what I can say is that it's an important moment for language study that someone like Huntsman could be considered seriously as a candidate. A diplomat and student of Chinese and Chinese culture, he is a strong advocate for language study and cultural understanding.

Check out this video. Or here: He believes that language study is important. He can speak Chinese (with a slightly too standard Beijing-y pronunciation, to my ears, and some tone issues. but still). He thinks Confucian thought ought to be studied. He thinks that since Chinese children are learning English from the second they learn to talk, American students should be learning Chinese as well. All of this is important to the future of America and China and American-Chinese relations.

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