I just returned from a 19 day visit to Shanghai and Nanjing, where we were working on a partnership with the Amity Foundation, an NGO with Christian roots. They're involved in development, healthcare and educational programs, especially aimed at the large population of rural Chinese who are migrating (or attempting to migrate) to the large Eastern cities.

In an effort to discourage this massive migration, the children of these families are not eligible for regular education programs. Amity supports schools for these kids and Amity is begging for English speakers/teachers from the US and Europe. Teachers work with middle-school kids as well as university students training to be teachers--the premise is that English will be at least as important to the economic future of China, as Mandarin may be for the rest of the world.

You may be slightly ahead of the curve. In time Americans who speak Mandarin will have the exotic and bankable cachet bi-lingual talent in Spanish -- and to a lesser extent French, German, or Russian -- has today.

Mandarin speakers already command a huge default premium here, for which demand will doubtlessly rise in the forseeable future. But it's hard to imagine a Peitou district for Mainland Chinese sprouting up anytime soon near Whichta or West Covina.

If a few hundred fun-loving and adventurous young Chinese people manage to descend on San Francisco, L.A., or New York for a year or two at a time, and are able to support themselves in relative style and comfort (as similarly situated Americans have done for a generation in Taiwan, Japan, and Korea), well, we'll ALL be better off.

My guess, though, is the secret rooms and inner workings of China's ascendance to economic superpower status will remain inscrutable to the average American for quite a while yet.