Hanwen School, Berkeley | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

My daughter has been going to Han Wen since its inception. She just began 2nd grade when she started at Han Wen, and was quite fluent in Mandarin and knew how to write some simple Chinese characters (thanks to the Chinese preschool she attended before!). In the first week, the teachers at Han Wen evaluated her Chinese proficiency and put her in the advanced class. Then for the first month in the class, she received a crash course in Zhu Yin (a phonetic lettering system in traditional Chinese, more like Hiragana in Japanese). As a native Chinese speaker who learned Ping Yin in mainland China (a phonetic lettering system in simplified Chinese, more like the roman letters), I was a bit skeptical when I learned Zhu Yin would be taught at the beginning, because I thought it was much more difficult than Ping Ying and might be rather boring for little ones to learn. To my pleasant surprise, my daughter turned out to enjoy learning Zhu Ying in her class and often came home chanting Bo Po Mo Fo … In about one month, she mastered the Zhu Ying system, and was able to write short sentences in Zhu Ying. She even started to communicate with my Taiwanese friend on WeChat in pure Zhu Ying!

Ron, the school principle, told me the plan is to get kids learn Zhu Ying first and then learn Ping Ying later, so that they would not confuse Ping Ying with English. I consider it an excellent judgement given my daughter’s positive learning experience. Now after half a year, she is able to read Chinese books annotated with Zhu Ying even though she does not understand some of the Chinese characters. The school also periodically sent out Chinese flashcards, textbooks and exercise books for students to practice at home. The flashcards have both Chinese characters annotated with both Zhu Ying and Ping Ying. I have noticed my daughter was able to recognize most of the flashcard characters she got each time. At such a steady rate, I am confident she would build up a decent Chinese vocabulary in a couple of years.

I highly recommend Han Wen. It is the best Chinese afterschool option in Berkeley for parents who want to continue advancing their children’s Chinese education.

We are very pleased with our daughter’s progress at Hanwen. My husband and I do not speak Mandarin and therefore we rely on Hanwen’s teachers and the founder, Ron Chung, to expose her to the language and culture. I’m impressed by Ron Chung’s commitment to the children learning Mandarin and his use of various resources. My daughter loves the teachers as they are caring, patient and enthusiastic. It is very evident that Ron and the teachers have put a lot of thought and energy in their teaching materials and the curriculum. I’m struck by the amount of words the children learn as well as how much they retain due to speaking, reading and applying their knowledge. I know my daughter feels very confident with her knowledge of Mandarin and that’s a pretty big deal since she can’t speak Mandarin at home. I also appreciate all the extra resources Ron provides to the families, which includes an app game he designed to help the children learn their Zhu Yin, audio stories and songs that I can access online and custom made flash cards. But we love this school not only for the Mandarin. Since I rely on this school as her aftercare until 6 pm, I’m thrilled there are enough activities (including yoga and kung fu in Mandarin), games and art projects to keep her engaged throughout the afternoon. There are plenty of times the parents are hanging out and waiting to pick up their children because the kids don’t want to leave since they are having so much fun. I’m a very big fan of Hanwen.