Over 50 years, the deaf education in China has been implementing "oral teaching" model, through which the role of sign language in deaf education has long been neglected. As deaf schools do not provide relevant courses, sign language as a language is not in use at deaf schools In 1887, American missionary C. R. Mills has founded the first deaf school in Yantai waterfront of Yellow Sea, Shandong province

http://www.newsigns.jp/fsle/china ← helpful site for actual signs

- American missionary named C. R. Mills supported his wife, Neddie Thompson, in the establishment of the first school for the deaf in China in Shandong in 1887

- A second school opened in Shanghai in 1892

- Most deaf children leave school with an education three grades lower than their hearing peers

- In 2001 the Tianjin school for the Deaf adopted Chinese Sign Language as their main method of communication and made an effort to have deaf employees

- Like most other sign languages, Chinese Sign Language is mostly conveyed through shapes and motions joined with facial expressions

- within the character for deaf, “聋,” is the character 龙, meaning “dragon,”

- estimates say that there are around 3,000,000 deaf people in China

 

China is the world's most populous country, and also has the world's largest number of deaf population and deaf schools. Sign language has not yet become the communication and teaching language in deaf schools; Over 50 years, the deaf education in China has been implementing "oral teaching" model, through which the role of sign language in deaf education has long been neglected. As deaf schools do not provide relevant courses, sign language as a language is not in use at deaf schools. Meanwhile, deaf people cannot obtain the teaching certificate of national recognition. However, the situation is gradually changing. While 80 percent of deaf children receive an education now, many do not use standardized Chinese Sign Languagen the other hand, recent media attention has led to sign courses in universities, and a Deaf Pride movement has begun, so Deaf culture is now valued, and there are some new bilingual-bicultural schools.

Chinese Sign Language (CSL) has been developing mostly since the late 1950's and its signs are like written Chinese characters. In some ways, CSL is similar to ASL. The signs in CSL look like written Chinese characters which is similar to how the ASL manual alphabet looks like the written English alphabet. For example, the CSL sign for "person" looks exactly like the written Chinese character for "person".

Because Chinese is already a pictorial language, the connection between the written language and that of the CSL becomes tighter than even in ASL. For example, two index fingers pointing to each other, with the right index slightly higher than the left forming an inverted “v”, means person. This is because CSL has just signed the exact written Chinese character for person!

This restaurant's investor, Zhangping Sheng, told reporters that opening this restaurant was originally a way of giving his deaf son and people likeThe manager of the restaurant, Gao Cui, told reporters that it is first ever 'silent restaurant' to open in China. Of 30 staff members, 22 are deaf

With the merger, deaf pupils followed the same curriculum that of their hearing peers. However, in 1978, the Chinese Sign Section was phrased out. This phasing-out coincided with another important milestone in the school's history which was the introduction of Total Communication in 1977

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (L, front) communicates with deaf-mute workers with hand language at the Foxconn scientific and technical zone in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province July 5, 2009

In 1887, American missionary C. R. Mills has founded the first deaf school in Yantai waterfront of Yellow Sea, Shandong province. In 1949, before the foundation of New China, there were 42 schools for the deaf and blind, the majority of which are private schools, with the number of students exceed 2,380. After 1949, the state took over all the special education schools and hence special education started to develop steadily. Particularly in the late 20 years, China has made significant achievements in terms of the number of special education schools founded. On December 3rd last year, China officially announced the second national census of people with disabilities. The figures show that China now has 82.96 million people with disabilities, counting 6.34% of the nation's total population. Among them, 20.04 million are with hearing disabilities, and 1.27 million speech disabilities. China now has 644 deaf schools, with 120,000 deaf students studying in either ordinary schools or special education schools. Due to various reasons and some school-age deaf children did not enter schools.