My name is Jian Zhao. I came from Shanghai, China, where I took both my undergraduate and graduate studies, majoring in Chinese language and literature. Later I went to Japan and Canada to continue my graduate studies and obtained my doctoral degree from University of Toronto, Canada. I have been teaching Chinese in China, Japan and Canada for more than two decades, starting as teaching assistant to professor. As I have been accumulating teaching experience in various countries with different groups of students including Chinese-major college and graduate school students and continuing study adults, I understand well different requirements and focuses for different students. My research interest is in East Asian cultural studies. I am an essay writer for different newspapers and magazines in China. In my spare time, I also compose classical Chinese poems.
Li Han is very interested in learning and teaching language. She studied Russian and passed the university language qualification exam. While working as an interior designer in Singapore she taught herself English and obtained a full score on the TOEFL test in three years. She also tutored beginner-level Chinese student in Canada for one year before going to graduate school in the United States. For Li, seemingly unrelated fields such as design and language are strongly connected. Mastering a language is very much like mastering art. Language is art.