Most places talk about being a community. CLI is a place that is actually one. People enfold you with love and generosity.
Robert and Bradford Fried founded CLI in 2009 after a combined ten years in China, most of it spent in classrooms, on both sides of the desk.
At its core, CLI is a community effort. Many of the people who opened the doors in 2009 are still here today, and the open, welcoming environment we built in Guilin is what we would most like you to experience for yourself.
We built the school we wished existed when we were learning Chinese.
Robert and Bradford Fried, co-founders
Since our founding, CLI has placed the student experience at the center of everything we do.
As a 3rd-year philosophy student at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Bradford embarks on a journey to study abroad at Guangxi Normal University and is enchanted by Guilin almost immediately. He has such a positive experience that he returns immediately after graduating from Lewis and Clark College to teach English at GXNU's sister high school, Erfu Zhong.
Three years later Robert makes the trip. Guilin does the same thing to him. Bradford, meanwhile, stays on, living and working as an educator in China until 2016. In 2007 Robert moves to China to study Mandarin seriously. Their mother Nancy, who still answers CLI's US phone (888-781-8383) to this day, helps a second son prepare for life abroad.
While Robert studies advanced Mandarin at Tsinghua University, the brothers sketch out the school they wished existed when they were learning Chinese: every lesson one-on-one, immersion all day, a community small enough that everyone knows your name. By the end of the year the Chinese Language Institute has opened in Guilin. Dayong joins the teaching team in August and is still teaching here.
In January, Echo Zhan joins the team. Molin, Avril, Kolok, and Nancy Mo also become part of CLI during its early days. A GXNU graduate with a BA and MA in Chinese Literature, Echo will go on to lead the teaching staff and, from 2013 to 2020, to run CLI day to day. Nearly every program CLI offers carries her fingerprints.
In January, CLI finishes a full renovation of the first floor of its five-story learning center. The team has grown to 16 full-time members plus part-time instructors, students have come from more than 25 countries, and the year ahead will bring close to 300 students more.
CLI hosts its 1,000th student in China. Robert presents the CLI Method to 1,200 educators at the National Chinese Language Conference in Atlanta. Back in Guilin, a departing student signs his name on the wall before flying home, and a tradition begins that continues today.
What sets CLI apart is its community feel. I had opportunities to practice Chinese all day at the school building with interns, teachers, and other students.Mike Kehoe, 2016
Robert and Bradford both earn their master’s degrees. Bradford completes three years as Director of International Staff at GXNU. In August, Robert opens a CLI office in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC. More than 150 universities have now accepted GXNU transfer credit earned through CLI.
Students and teachers complete more than 30,000 hours of Chinese class in a single year. Five CLI teachers welcome babies. The team retreat heads north to Nanjing, where the duck blood soup gets mixed reviews.
Bradford begins a PhD in Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studying how people actually learn languages. In September, students, teachers, homestay families, and alumni fill the CLI Center for the ten-year anniversary. Robert and Bradford take the microphone together. We put together this short film for the team to mark the occasion.
A video we prepared for the 10-year anniversary celebration, September 2019. Many of the faces here were also in the room in 2009.
Robert is studying Spanish in Barcelona when the borders close due to Covid-19, and ends up running CLI from Colorado. Every lesson moves online. 95% of the previous year’s revenue had been tied to student travel, so the business is rebuilt around Zoom, graded readers, and a pinyin chart. Through it all, at least forty people stay on CLI payroll every month. Over the next three years the team teaches more than 60,000 online class hours to students in over 50 countries.
Student visas return in the summer of 2022, tourist visas on March 15, 2023. In between, the team runs its first program in Taiwan. By the following spring, 150 students from more than 20 countries have come back through the CLI Center, and 2024 becomes the first full year back: 430 students from 31 countries, plus 11,000 hours taught online.
CLI delivers 36,000 hours of one-on-one Chinese to students from at least 35 countries: 23,000 in person in Guilin and 13,000 online. One student is here on his ninth visit. In November the team retreats to Chongqing and Wulong, where the saying for the trip is 学如登山, studying is like climbing a mountain.
Seventeen years on, CLI has just finished renovating student facilities across all five floors of the Center and has hosted more than 5,000 students from over 50 countries. The core team that opened the doors in 2009 and 2010, Echo, Molin, Avril, Kolok, Nancy Mo, Dayong, Bradford, and Robert, is still here. So are twenty hours a week of one-on-one Chinese, three teachers coordinating around one student.
Since 2009, CLI has hosted more than 5,000 students from over 50 countries and 400 institutions, Harvard, Yale, and Oxford among them. CLI has been featured in The Washington Post and the China Daily, and for nearly a decade Frommer’s has recommended CLI as one of the top Chinese programs in China.
Along the way came study abroad through Guangxi Normal University, online one-on-one lessons, and faculty-led seminars across China. Lunch at the Center is still served family style, and the teachers still know every student by name.
CLI's team has stayed together through the years. One of our great joys is seeing students return for their second, third, and fourth or more time.
Most places talk about being a community. CLI is a place that is actually one. People enfold you with love and generosity.
I think I met as many second, third, fourth, and nth-time visitors as I did first-timers like myself. I plan to go back at least annually.
This was my fifth time at CLI. As the classes are all one on one, your teachers can really work with you and find out what your goals are.
From CLI’s 110+ reviews on GoOverseas. Read more student stories.
Everyone on this list was here in 2009 or 2010 and is still part of CLI today. Echo ran the school day to day from 2013 to 2020; since 2021, Abby Huang has been Managing Director, with Anna Liang leading the academic program.
Moved to China in 2007 to study Mandarin and speaks it fluently. The idea for CLI came together in 2009 while Robert was studying advanced Mandarin at Tsinghua University.
Joint MA/MBA, Wharton School and Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, with a focus in China Studies.
Robert's older brother lived and worked as an educator in China from 2001 to 2016, including three years as Director of International Staff at Guangxi Normal University.
Master’s in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. PhD candidate in Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, focused on applied linguistics and cognitive science.
With CLI since January 2010. Echo led the teaching staff from 2012 to 2014 and directed CLI's day-to-day operations from 2013 to 2020. Echo remains one of the most-requested teachers at CLI to this day, now in her 16th year at CLI.
BA and MA in Chinese Literature, Guangxi Normal University.
Joined in the summer of 2009 and is CLI’s longest-serving Chinese teacher, still one of its most active in 2026. Dayong is from Harbin (哈尔滨), capital of China’s chilly northeastern province of Heilongjiang (黑龙江).
“At CLI, I’ve learned that the world is a big place, and every single person in it can be your teacher in some way.”
Guilin was chosen as CLI’s home for a long list of practical reasons. It’s warm. It’s small, with a population just under a million, and simple to get around. Residents are friendly and curious about newcomers. The rice noodles are excellent. English is rare enough that Mandarin becomes part of your day whether you plan it or not.
The deciding reason is the one you can’t put in a list. For more than a thousand years Guilin has been famous across China for its scenery, and arriving here still feels like stepping into an ink painting. The karst landscape has to be seen. Describing it doesn’t work, so we’ll stop trying.
Bradford came to Guilin first, in 2001, and fell in love with the city. Robert visited three years later and felt the same. When the brothers decided to build a language school in China, the question of where had a clear and simple answer. Explore Guilin.
桂林山水甲天下
Guìlín shānshuĭ jiǎ tiānxià
Guilin’s mountains and rivers are the finest under heaven
Teachers, directors, admissions, interns: the CLI team is the reason students come back time after time.
