My truly bilingual kids have an interesting tendency to read and write closer to their notebooks/books in Chinese than in English. Their heads glued to their Chinese assignments prompted me to take some serious action. Further more, their habit has made me believe the Chinese characters may be one of the reasons why so many locals, 60 percent of teens, wear glasses. Noteworthy is that the beautiful Chinese characters (about 4,000 to know before you can use the language well) are so detailed one has to be quite careful when writing them. At primary/secondary school levels, the requirement is very strict and kids under plenty of stress to master what's needed. Needless to say that the ancient Chinese or even the Taiwanese Chinese for that matter is more complex than the modern mainland one is. In the end, I am kind of happy my kids were born on mainland, not in Taiwan for the simplified version.