Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s new Senator, is one of only two people in the United States Congress with some proficiency in Mandarin, according to an article by David Chen in the New York Times: Gillibrand’s Affinity for Asia Becomes an Asset. The other is David Wu, an Oregon Congressman who was born in Taiwan.

Senator Gillibrand, an Asian studies major at Dartmouth in the 1980s, studied abroad in Beijing and Taiwan.