The CAIS Institute offers students across the Bay Area exciting opportunities to discover Chinese language and culture. Building on the foundation developed at San Francisco’s Chinese American International School, we provide a variety of programs, symposiums and cultural exchanges to broaden knowledge at the entry level and beyond.

Language Programs

The CAIS Institute offers a variety of intensive after-school programs providing students up to grade 12 with opportunities to study Chinese language and culture at various levels.

Chinese American International School

In 1981, a group of multi-ethnic San Francisco Bay Area parents, educators and civic leaders implemented a compelling vision—to create a school with a bilingual, multicultural curriculum in English and Mandarin Chinese to prepare children for an increasingly interconnected world.

The school began with four young students in two modest classrooms. It was the first school of its kind in the nation and remains one of the only independent pre-K through 8th Grade English-Mandarin immersion programs in the U.S.

This bold experiment has become a shining model of success. Today the school enrolls more than 400 students. CAIS graduates continue to enter leading high schools and universities. Some alumni now study and work in China. Others have exciting careers in the U.S. that draw on their bicultural education.