NY 'tiger mom' hothouses nine daughters with Mandarin lessons

Global century

For the reason why she put on such a high priority for her children to learn Mandarin, Berat sounded very forward looking and very deep in thought.

"I feel very strongly of technological change in invention that this century is the global century," she said. "And to be a global citizen, you really have to know the world, and the more languages and cultures that you really know intimately, the better it is (for you)," she emphasized.

"My hope for them from the beginning has been that they will be citizens of the world, we're pushing them in that direction," she said.

The emerging economies including China, India have been changing the political, economic and cultural landscapes of the world in the past decades, said Berat, who has been to more than 120 countries so far.

Though India "isn't quite awakened yet," the speed of China's development is "very impressive," she said.

"No one had expected" that China would become the second-largest economy after the United States when she first visited China's capital city of Beijing, Berat said.

"When one didn't know what would happen with China at that stage, obviously we can see now how things develop," she said.

Naturally, Mandarin Chinese is getting popular in the United States and other parts of the world, she said.

"Chinese is the 'flavor of the month' in many ways," said Berat, borrowing an expression of local ice cream store pushing "the flavor that's popular at the moment."