Silk Road Start began with a vision to find open doors for foreign students to come to Chinese university campuses and build meaningful relationships, cross-cultural skills, and vision and understanding of career opportunities in China. Since 2013, Over 400 international students came to China for short term or semester programs that included Chinese language, culture, and career development training. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 our programs have adapted to a monthly subscription model for online small group Mandarin Chinese studies. We continue to encourage and support participation in cultural exchange and service with Chinese people around the world while we wait for China’s borders to reopen for international students.
Silk Road Start Chinese Studies is operated as a program of University City Open Doors Inc. and contracts with the Chinese Teaching team from Tian Tong Cultural Consulting in Xi’an, China. In the past we ran our quality Chinese studies programs at Xi’an Eurasia University (2013-2020), Xi’an University of Posts and Telecom (2014, 2019), Xijing University ( 2015, 2017) and Yanan University Xi’an Innovation College (2018, 2019). We have partnered with Consortium for Global Education (CGE) to offer a Semester Study Abroad program and other short-term experiences to students from their network of over 40 private universities.
OUR TEAM
Silk Road Start Teacher Team
You will love our experienced and foreign friendly Chinese teachers.
Ocean Cheng – Co-Founder, Chinese Director and Chinese Teacher
Ocean holds degrees in Business Management and English and Certificate in Teaching Chinese to Foreigners. Ocean has been a very popular Chinese teacher in Xi’an for over 15 years, previously at Xi’an International School Chinese Training Center and teaching at Silk Road Start’s Eurasia and since June 2013.
吴建新 Joseph Worcester – Co-Founder & Student Recruitment Director
Joseph co-founded the Silk Road Start Program in 2013 at Eurasia University in order to share his language, culture and career development learning experiences with students from around the world. He has an MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship an Innovaton and also has studied, volunteered or worked in Russia, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. He is often the first point of contact and advisor for incoming students of our program.
Wendy Wang – Chinese Teacher
Wendy taught at Xi’an International School Chinese Training Center for over 10 years before beginning to teach with our program. She has received training and guided students in using the Growing Participator Approach and has the SOPI Assessment (Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview).
Leah Li – Chinese Teacher
Li WeI graduated from Xi’an International Studies University and have been teaching foreigners Chinese for 13 years. She excels in explaining grammar and helping students with their pronunciation. The atmosphere of her class is very lively and interactive. Li Wei loves what she does and enjoys every class with her students.
Sophia Ma – Chinese Teacher
Sophia graduated from Qinghai Normal University and is working on a Master of Arts in Education. She has a certificate in Teaching Chinese to Foreigners from Hanban. She also over 10 years of experience teaching foreigners and her teaching ability is often praised by our students.
王鸟 Esther Wang – Chinese Teacher
Esther graduated from Columbia International University with a Master of Arts in Education. She has been teaching with Silk Road Start since 2018 and also has extensive experience teaching children. Her cross-cultural experiences traveling in 8 countries she began to teach foreigners Chinese in our program. Her experience teaching kids translated well to teaching foreigners and she is known for being able to come up many fun and active learning activities.