English Animation Journey of My Daughter | Original
I have lived in Guangzhou, China in recent years. When I was working in Tianhe CBD in 2022, one day, I went to the office building and parked in a nearby parking spot that was part of a residential community. I saw a father using an iPad to help his son enter the elevator while quizzing him. His son answered in English. His son was quite young, like 4 or 5 years old. I was quite impressed at that time.
The houses there were worth 6 million or 10 million CNY at that time. They were quite expensive. So they were kind of rich. And they took care of the education of their kids so much. I had heard that people work hard to help their next generation succeed. I just hadn’t seen the actual scene in real life.
One thing is that when I was in my 20 to 25, I didn’t see many kids in my life. But when I had kids myself, I noticed that kids are everywhere.
Due to my recent years working as a contractor for foreign banks, my English improved a lot, and I use it at work or for personal study.
I take English learning as a priority for my daughter too. My daughter was born in 2021. In December 2023, I posted a video of my daughter singing “Baby Shark doo doo” and “Finger Family” while counting her fingers, and “Happy Birthday to You” on WeChat Video. This video gained more likes and views than my normal videos.
At that time, she was 2 years old. And I think she is quite inspiring for kids of similar ages in China.
Singing like that is not easy. It is not easy to access YouTube Kids in China. They are blocked by the Great Firewall.
So I bought an Apple TV and a Fire TV Stick. The inability to access them causes conflicts between me and my parents. My parents would like to give my daughter Chinese animations to watch. However, I prefer to give her English animations to watch.
And sometimes, if the VPN proxy for the Apple TV or Fire Stick doesn’t work, then my parents are unable to fix it. My wife is unable to as well. And at this time, if my daughter still wants to watch English animations and I am not available, she starts to cry for it.
At first, my parents were not able to comprehend why I do this. They think Chinese is okay too. I know. But now, in this society, the competition is too high. She is growing up in China, so she will know Chinese surely. However, English education is what she is missing. I spent several years in my 20s learning this language. So if she is able to achieve that familiarity or get IELTS 7 before 20, then she is going to perform well in the international corporate world.
And there are lots of fights or arguments with my wife that I shouldn’t let her use my second mobile phone—a Google Pixel—to watch English animations much. I think that’s not a problem because I can reverse myopia. Please check out my paper.
It is really hard to change the opinions of others, including relatives. After seeing my daughter’s progress in English, they started to accept letting her watch English animations.
There are people saying that mobile phones are killing people’s dopamine systems. We shouldn’t let kids touch digital devices at their early ages.
I don’t think so, actually. What’s the difference between English animations and an English environment? An English environment is just a physical and real English animation. The colorful scenes may stimulate brains. But how about the colorful playground?
Like Geoffrey Hinton and Elon Musk, who have been involved with digital technology for more than 4 decades, would digital devices change their brains? They are tools to record and share information. It depends on how you use them.
And we give our daughter English animations to watch while we go on a trip. I put my second mobile phone on the headrest of the seat, stuck in the empty gap, so it won’t fall down.
As of June 2025, my daughter probably has 500 hours of English watching experience. Starting from April 2023 to now, two years have passed. It is like one hour a day. Though she is still not able to sing more English songs, we don’t ask or practice this purposely. But surely her brain has changed a lot.
Through English animations, she knows a lot too. I don’t know what she watches. If we ask, she can tell. And when we talk about something, she mentions that from some English animation too.
Think about it: if every kid in China starts to use this way, in less than 20 years, China will become like Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew turned Singapore into an English-speaking country within half a century.
The good news is that though there is the Great Firewall to separate China and the global world, almost all popular English videos on TikTok we can see on Chinese WeChat videos or Douyin too, with Chinese captions as well. There are tons of materials.
When I worked as a contractor in a Singaporean bank, I heard that in our team, some Indian colleagues speak English at home with their kids. It was quite astonishing to me. Think about China. People graduated from Tsinghua or Peking universities may not have that discipline or culture to speak English to their kids.
But I think for some parts of India and for Singapore, it is normal and natural.
My daughter is living in the future. Maybe one day all kids from all nations will watch English animations since they are two years old. And within a few generations, like in 2050, 80% of the population can speak English.