Fried himself had chased scholarships and took out a student loan for courses that cost about $10,000 - only to discover he could have paid about one-tenth that amount by enrolling directly, if he had known how.

So the two brothers put together a business plan for Chinese Language Institute, where they would teach the way Robbie had learned from Brad - in bite-sized pieces, intensive but not overwhelming.

They approached a group of businessmen who worked with their father, borrowed $10,000, and CLI was born - in Robbie's dorm room at Tsinghua University. Soon the brothers had rented a three-bedroom apartment and held classes in the living room. They say a chalkboard was their biggest investment in teaching tools.

The Frieds had one student at first in 2009, four at the year-end winter term, and five the next spring. But they stayed focused. "I wasn't turned off by the low turnout," Fried says. "I was confident that we had something special."

By the end of 2010 they had 42 students, and the numbers have doubled each year since. The loan was repaid the first year, and the language school now thrives in a five-story building in Guilin with a strong base in the community. Despite its professional staff, CLI is still a family affair. A third Fried brother runs the company website, and mom Nancy Fried works as director of admissions from her home in the US.

Besides its own immersion courses in Mandarin, the institute runs a semester-abroad program at Guangxi Normal University, where it has 13 classrooms, and helps Americans secure English-teaching positions from middle-school to university level. That includes many Asian-American students who can speak perfect English and have a head start interacting with the culture, says Fried.

The brothers also negotiated a three-week study tour with Virginia Tech, Robbie's alma mater and spread word of their language school through a feature in the Washington Post as well as other newspapers. Virginia Tech students can claim course credits for studies done at the institute.

Programs last from two weeks to a year, and tuition costs from about $700 for two weeks to about $19,000 for one year, depending on the program and accommodation. The institute had revenue of more than $160,000 in its first year, Robbie Fried says.

Nicholas Gacos, a student in the inaugural study tour, told a Virginia-based reporter that, "We crammed so much learning into those three weeks. The things we did, and saw, and ate, and the people with whom we interacted. It was an unbelievable learning experience."

Robbie Fried says: "We took 17 students and three professors to Beijing and Shanghai during those three weeks." "They got a functional taste of language, studied international communication and Chinese history, and took part in a roundtable on sustainable tourism in Guilin. They visited media companies and government bureaus, and we had a great personal exchange we called 'speed dating' at a local university, where we put the American students on one side of the table and the Chinese on the other, and launched five-minute conversations designed to do away with misconceptions."

The Frieds think US President Barack Obama's project to boost the numbers of Americans studying in China from about 14,000 to 100,000 in four years is a great idea.

"It's a wise investment," says Fried, who is now 25. "And the starting point is breaking misconceptions about China, ideally with high-school students.

"Parents often hesitate to send their kids halfway around world to 'a Communist country'. A lot of Americans, especially from the baby-boomer generation, haven't realized how much China has progressed, how friendly people are, how developed cities are, how safe travel and the living environment are."

Nati Tamir, a retired diplomat from Israel who found the program on the Internet, says it is comfortable enough for all ages. He and his wife, Daphne, are nearing the end of a six-month course at the institute and give the Frieds top marks for making their studies successful.

Fried says CLI's oldest student has been a 72-year-old Chilean doctor, and the youngest a lively five-year-old American from Arizona.

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/07/2012 page20)