Because of the language changes that have taken place in the People's Republic of China since 1949, Chinese can be seen as a language divided between the pre-1949 varieties and the post-1949 ones. What is taught in the United States does not reflect the current Chinese situation, partly because most of the native language teachers in the United States left China in 1949. The chages that have taken place in the language of the People's Republic, which include phonological, lexical, and syntactical elements, as well as situational ones, must be taken into account in language instruction. A student of Chinese should acquire linguistic and sociolinguistic competence and an awareness of both the pre-1949 and the post-1949 varieties of Chinese. Therefore, Chinese language teaching materials need to deal with the sociolinguistic variants. This can be done by providing existing texts with supplementary materials that make use of a contrastive approach to present the variant usages. (Author/CLK)