Whether they are proprietors of tea import businesses like Zheng's or salaried workers figuring out how to manage their paychecks, the students in the class view the American system as alien territory.

"In China," Li explained, "there are no individual checking accounts, only those for businesses. The majority of people use cash only. ... The banking system is totally different."

Li teaches the class in Chinese in a program co-sponsored by the nonprofit Pacific Gateway Center and American Savings Bank, serving a community that's among those most troubled by the language barrier.

The class is conducted in two four-hour blocks on consecutive days, designed as a quick study for time-crunched working people, said Alison Humphries, the corporate giving and sponsorship coordinator for the bank.

The bank also has its own staff of Chinese-speaking tellers at selected branches, she said. The kinds of problems they encounter among the unaided customers are real (a lack of awareness about minimum balances and the related fees, for example) but usually not disastrous, Humphries added.

"We've been getting positive feedback from participants in the class," she said. "Luckily we've been able to help them before they get in trouble."

Joy Barua, project director for the center, said Pacific Gateway has been conducting financial literacy classes as part of its business training curriculum for almost nine years. Although the Filipino immigrant community might be larger, he said, more of them have better English language skills than the ethnic Chinese coming from China or Southeast Asia.

And, he said, most are unaccustomed to the banking system's benefits — such as federal insurance for banks — and the pitfalls — such as the damage a few mistakes can do to the all important credit rating.

"In Asian countries, individuals like you and me don't have access to loans," he said. "The consumer finance market is totally absent."

In a classroom at the gateway center's Kalihi facility, Li delivered the segment on banking basics, her rapid-fire patter in Cantonese peppered with a few key English terms she hoped to etch into the students' memory. Money order. Debit card. Savings institution.

For many of the students, she said, the favorite part comes at the end, in the lecture on managing household expenses. They're all encouraged to relate the information to their personal circumstances, she said.

"As an instructor, I view the budget chapter as the best," she said. "They're more actively involved, and it makes the class more interesting."

It's all about survival for Zheng, who emigrated with her daughter from Zhongshan in Guangdong province two years ago to rejoin her husband here. Zheng opened her business a year ago as a means to add household income. She's studying English and is enrolling in other business classes offered at the center as well, but she felt the need for some basic financial grounding first.

"When I just come here (to Hawai'i), I don't know anything," she said with a smile. "I am a baby, just born."