Building the Best Mandarin Classes in New York City

Why Sishu Mandarin?

First and foremost, it’s Sishu, not sushi.

Sishu is a 2,000-year-old Chinese learning structure of prestigious education, which also means private schooling in Chinese. It highly resembles what we do. We offer high-quality private Chinese classes to New Yorkers and anyone who might be interested in learning Chinese.

Also, Sishu is a relatively easy word to pronounce (again not sushi) even for those who have not studied Chinese.

You might wonder why we chose Sishu Mandarin over Sishu Chinese. We thought the Chinese could be too general. It could imply Chinese culture, Chinese people, and more. The word Mandarin only implies the language that Chinese people speak.

Where did you get the inspiration for your logo?

Mandarin. We meant actually a mandarin orange. We like the round shape and its color and how friendliness the image projects. What’s more, it’s nutrient! 很多维生素！

What made you want to start offering Mandarin classes to New Yorkers?

Our founder Tian had taught Mandarin at many different places in New York City before becoming an entrepreneur in education. He was frustrated to see how many Mandarin classes failed but there’s very little for him to do as a teacher. As a result, he decided to start his own Chinese language school.

Tian wanted to make every aspect of his students’ learning experience perfect. He hated the way that many schools treated their students as customers and paid very little attention to building their teacher team.

Tian and our teacher team at Sishu Mandarin are eager to change things for the better. Being the best Chinese language school in New York City has always been our goal.

Why did we start out with the name “Indacube”? （Written in 2016）

It's a funny name. 

That's what my friends told me.

Agreed.

Naming a business is hard. You don't want a newborn baby to have an awkward name. On the other hand, you want that name to be blessed; you want that name to be impressive; you want that name to last eternally. 

While I was looking for a room for the baby, I found that WeWork could be an ideal place where I could get almost everything I needed for nurturing the baby. The WeWork office became our incubator for the baby.

Several days later, on a beautiful Sunday morning, an idea somehow came into my mind. I said to myself, now that I will be working in a cubed-shaped office, I could just name the baby "in da cube" (I listened to too much rap music growing up in case you’d like to know). I named the business Indacube that morning, and the name brightened my whole day.  

After a few days, when I was opening my business account at Chase bank, a private banker, Rosemary, told me "in da cube" sounds really Brooklynese because people in Brooklyn often replace the "the" sound with "da". 

Her warm words made me like the name even more. 

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Tian Zhou