Chapter 5 takes the reader to a community-based weekend Chinese language school. Drawing upon reflections from a Chinese language teacher there, it delineates the historical complexity of Chinese language traits and cultural values as well as the challenges in choosing what to impart to children who speak Chinese as a heritage language and how to instill a cultural ethos which may be divergent from mainstream culture. It explores the history and evolving emphasis of Chinese language schools over time, the nature and cultural significance of the Chinese writing system as well as the challenges it poses to learners of Chinese as a heritage language, the culturally specific ways of conceptualizing education, and the cultural shift that accompanies and motivates language shift.

provides an overview of the Chinese language and its many dialects and how they differ from other Asiatic languages (e.g., Japanese). The chapter then reviews the origins and evolution of the Chinese writing system. The chapter closes with an overview of the modern Chinese writing system and its conventions, including points of difference with other writing systems (e.g., alphabetic scripts like English) and examples of how words can be decomposed into characters, radicals, and strokes.