She is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the new Democratic senator from New York State who took Hillary Clinton’s seat, and the word is she speaks Mandarin Chinese. Not only that, she does so with “good, straight tones.”

Gillibrand took the Chinese name when she was an Asian Studies major at Dartmouth College, where she graduated in 1988. At the time, Gillibrand went by the name Tina Rutnik. Tina sounds like “tian na,” which is Chinese for “that sky” or “that heaven.” Lu would be the Chinese equivalent of the first syllable of her maiden last name.

Here’s what the New York Times said about her in a Jan. 24 story:

She learned to speak and write Chinese before spending a semester in China, and wrote a senior project titled “The History of Tibetan Resistance to the Chinese Occupation of Tibet 1950-1988.”

As part of her studies, she and her mother visited the Dalai Lama’s house while traveling in India. The Albany Times Union reported in 2006 that mother and daughter paid to support the education of a Tibetan boy.

It turns out that a Chinese-language newspaper in New York City, World Journal, called her office this week and asked to conduct an interview in Chinese. She accepted.

Rachel McEneny, Gillibrand’s spokeswoman, provided some information to an Albany Times-Union reporter, who blogged here about what happened:

Gillibrand took the phone and spoke with the reporter in Mandarin for around 15 minutes, according to McEneny.

Gillibrand’s interview with the World Journal didn’t turn up anything particularly surprising - she spoke of her interest in US-China relations and her hope to work on those issues as a member of the Foreign Affairs committee. She also spoke about her increased concern about Tibetan issues in China.

Gillibrand wrote her college senior thesis, “The History of Tibetan Resistance to the Chinese Occupation of Tibet 1950-1988,” after traveling to India and China.

The story discussed Gillibrand’s position on immigration - namely the need to give legal immigrants the opportunity to work towards citizenship - but it wasn’t immediately clear from the story if it was from the paper’s interview with Gillibrand, or culled from previous statements. (When asked whether immigration was part of the interview, McEneny replied, “i dont know _ I dont speak the laguage…seriously… “)

On Monday, Gillibrand said this of her position on immigration:

“My view has always been that we need to right-size immigration,” she said. “We need to have the right number of visas to accommodate the right number of workers, particularly for this industry. The agriculture industry’s number one concern is, we need access to legal workers, and we need our immigration system to work for our industry because there is so much talent that we need to keep in this country that are experts in all of these various industries.”

The World Journal complimented Gillibrand’s pronunciation, saying that she spoke with good, straight tones.