Computer sez…backpacking English teacher! Bet he smells, too.

Can we torture Da Shan? And then take his money and his hot wife??

Ps…I threw ya a BIG bone with the William Hung reference… You bit. Good boy.

I live in Guilin, and have done so for about 3 years so far. I was taking a taxi the other day and started chatting with the driver about the gov’t heat warning, traffic, etc. She abruptly told me that my Chinese was very good and not like the other foreigners that take her cab. I told her that many of my foreign friends in Guilin speak much better Chinese than I, to which she stated she possibly had given rides to some of them. “The tall, long beard guy. Do you know him?” she asked. “Yes, he’s a good friend of mine” I told her. “His Chinese is very good and I think his prounciation is better than most locals. What about the guy with crazy pony tail (single long dreadlock)?” she inquired. “Yeah, I know him as well.” “Did you know,” she asked “that he can even speak Guilin hua really well.” This went on.

She continued asking me about others and commenting on their language ability. Finally I asked her why she had said that my Chinese was better than most others, to which she replied, “You know, the others, like tourists and those people you see on TV.” “Like the Fu Ren Jie commercial?” I asked. “Right, right, right,” she replied, “her tones are all wrong, my daughter thinks its really funny.”

I don’t know….I’d rather watch foreigners sing and hop around than watch them tortorously debate Yang Rui on CCTV9’s Dialogue. Or Da Shan

Side note: I have yet to see any evidence that Da Shan has any real talent in performing arts…..at all. His success seems predicated on being extremely fluent in Chinese as well as being in the right place at the right time. Do you seriously think he’d attain any notoriety or celebrity whatsoever if he hit the scene today?

I really couldn’t give two hoots if Ben loses his dignity or not about this stuff (which I still argue he does). I DO, however, somewhat resent the fact that the image he projects to the,oh,1.2999 Billion Chinese who have never met a foreigner is that of a foolish clown. My students seem to mostly think that we foreigners are silly dancing bears in many ways.

Of course, that’s Ben’s business and he’s free to do whatever he wants, but I still say that it’s akin to asking Patesh, Miguel and Soon-Yi to sing “La Vida Loca” solely to have the American audience laugh AT them.

Wait. That’s been done.

Just in case anyone else wants to do some Wu Bai songs, lyrics to several of his songs are available in pinyin at http://pinyin.info/ (scroll down).

Cheers, Boyce