The English pronunciation of these 4 letters c-c-u-e is the closest thing to mean “Everything is as you wish” in Cantonese.
Cantonese learning in Bay Area has gone from a cool language to having a hard time to keep the heritage. Why? In the 80s, or 90s, there were waves of Hong Kong Immigration, popular Cantonese TV series, Cantonese songs, movies and singers. Folks in mainland China and Asia picked up Cantonese from the media, from friends and from the celebrities. Into the late 90s, Hong Kong changed from a British colony to a special administrative region of China. The policy is “no change in 50 years”, it is a politically-smart reality distortion, how could one expect nothing changed in 50 years? With the economic boom in China, the upgrade of China’s international status, and hosting of highly visible international events like Olympics Games, Expos, more and more people prefer Mandarin over Cantonese; and prefer interacting with Mainland China directly for opportunities.
Increase in immigrantsm, from Mainland China to Bay Area, has led to Chinese being offered as a elective language course in High Schools, Middle Schools; Cupertino school district may be the first one; followed by a few other school districts including Los Altos-Mountain View High.
What does this mean to Cantonese Chinese School operated as non-profit organizations, and have school hours typically in evening or weekends? Enrollment has dropped year-over-year and the fear of extinction is felt though not mentioned.
Putting in an analogy between “running a school for a minority foreign language” and “running a business with challenging product trends”, I ponder on TAM and the possible (product) differentiation for the Cantonese Chinese School; and how to attract customers. (TAM = Total Addressable Market).
How would you identify the TAM and what could be the differentiation for Cantonese Chinese School?
oliviatamccue 
[…] to the blog on “what is ccue?“, I have taken some rough angle in guessing the potential students for Cantonese education […]