Most of the work was done when her children were asleep. What she calls “my hobby” took two years to develop, during a sabbatical from her venture capital business. She decided to create something that would engage her kids and had a proper methodology. The problem, says Hsueh, was that “it was all random and there was no method behind it”. Most of the systems are repetition and speaking-based – so the focus is on being able to say a few Chinese words rather than on recognising the characters. Frustrated with her English-born children’s lack of interest in learning Mandarin, Hsueh tried several different methods of teaching them herself, and sent them to after-school clubs. Hsueh realised she was on to something as soon as she’d given the talk: “A lot of people came up to me afterwards and said they could not believe it – they never thought they could learn Chinese and now they are interested and want to learn.” The talk has been viewed more than 900,000 times.īehind this “flash card” approach to learning basic Chinese characters lies some serious research. It’s a riveting piece of theatre: she paces the stage and introduces the nine basic characters – including mouth, person, fire – that form the building blocks for reading hundreds more. The Chineasy phenomenon came to public attention in May this year, when a talk Hsueh had given about her new learning method in February – at TED in California – went online. We meet in Chineasy’s tiny Soho office, where beautifully illustrated Chinese characters cover the walls, the papers fluttering gently in the breeze. “It is a legacy, and something I would like to share,” she says. And she’s (so far) funded the project herself from her savings, giving it all away free via her Facebook page and website. She’s developing a kind of shareware for the mind – a groundbreaking method of reading and interpreting Chinese characters for westerners, called “Chineasy”. Hsueh later moved to London and set up a venture capital investment firm in 2005, but her latest project is one directly linked to her family roots among the paint pots and calligraphy brushes. She didn’t immediately take on her parents’ artistic legacy: describing herself as an unashamed “geek”, she studied biochemistry at university, wrote some unlikely and bestselling Microsoft user manuals (“I used my imagination and put a lot of my own thoughts in”) and went on to be a first-wave internet entrepreneur, co-founding pAsia, an early internet success story, in 1995. “I grew up in this environment, in the mud, in the ink, in the paintbrushes,” she says. ShaoLan Hsueh was born and raised in Taiwan, the daughter of a calligrapher and a ceramic artist. I'm an ideas man.Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest - delivered directly to your inbox. Step 2: Create the car", and to great applause, the young inventor says, "We've already completed step one. Step 1: Devise an idea that creates a car that runs on compost. "The idea is there, it just needs implementation. Sip of water."īack in 2012, The Onion did their own version of the popular TED Talks. How to react if your audience begins to wonder if what you are saying has a point? "Coming back to the centre of the stage. "If it's okay with you I'd like to come to the centre of the stage and give you some unremarkable context about how I became a thought leader." So begins his talk on his weekly news satire show This is That, where he describes how to give the perfect TED Talk, inspire audience adulation, and get a standing ovation by saying nothing at all. You know I'm a thought leader because I am wearing a blazer and I have just done this with my hands." In the video above, comedian Pat Kelly tells you exactly how. Indeed, the "thought leader" seems to have distilled the answers to life's greatest mysteries into a 45-minute talk. There are pauses at the right moments, emphasis on the right phrases, and we feel we have truly learnt some things we didn't know. He paces up and down while making profound disclosures and observations that are awe-inspiring and thought-provoking. A (usually) middle-aged (usually) white (usually) male in glasses walks on stage. We've seen it many times on our screens by now.
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