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¡¡¡¡Zhao Wei: You have been in China for so many years, what's your feeling about living in China? Do you enjoy it?

¡¡¡¡Dashan: Well, actually, I lived in China fullª²time for 7 years, from 1988 to 1995. But now since 1995, I live half in Canada and half in China. I really enjoy that, because I enjoy my work in China and my friends and everything here. But I also enjoy Canada. So I find the best thing for me is to go back and forth, because that way I can continue with my career here and have my normal life in Canada where nobody recognizes me. For me, both of those together are really the best combination.

¡¡¡¡Zhao: I think Chinese people are more familiar with you speaking Chinese, but our magazine needs you to speak English. So it's lucky for us to hear your English this time. I just wonder which language do you speak more in your daily life, Chinese or English?

¡¡¡¡Dashan: It's hard to say, because sometimes it depends on what you are doing, whom you are talking with and what subject you are talking about. But I find talking about something very Chinese is difficult to do in English. And also from the opposite way, sometimes trying to explain something about western culture in Chinese is difficult too.

¡¡¡¡Zhao: You are considered a successful foreign language learner, could you share with us your experience in learning foreign languages?

¡¡¡¡Dashan: I studied Chinese for 4 years in my university in Canada. I think one of the things my teacher did very well was to get away from traditional textbooks as soon as possible. We used the standard textbooks for the first 2 years, because you have to learn the pinyin, you have to learn the basic characters and basic grammar. For those things, textbooks are the best,because they are very scientific. Everything is nicely arranged for you to learn in order. But language itself is not like that. In many ways, it's not really a very scientific thing. I think many people in China who study English have a mistake. They try to use very scientific methods to study something that itself is very unscientific. So in the third year, my teacher just showed us short stories or newspaper articles or just things for everyday life to learn. Anyway, it's very difficult at first. But I think the biggest advantage is: textbooks are written by Chinese people for foreigners, while the novels or newspapers are something the Chinese people write for themselves. So the same thing, we will make textbooks for Chinese person probably different from the way we would actually speak to a native speaker. So I think once you get to a certain level, it's good to get away from the textbooks and just go to the real living language that people actually speak.

¡¡¡¡Zhao: It seems that coming to China helped a lot with your Chinese. And many students believe that if they want to speak foreign languages very well, they have to go abroad. Do you agree with them?

¡¡¡¡Dashan: It helps! Certainly. My personal experience is that it's possible to learn a language without immersion1 environment, but it's much better to have an immersion. When I first came to China, I could talk to people in the street, I could do the basic conversation with no problem, and I could do those skits2 on television, but of course, my accent was very strong. I think even if you have the knowledge and the ability to communicate, you don't have the feeling for the language. And the feeling for the language is something that you'll get with immersion environment. So for young people, I hope everybody has the opportunity to travel overseas. I find there's another great benefit that you can understand your own country much better.

¡¡¡¡Zhao: Could you talk something about your mentor3 Jiang Kun? What did he teach you on your class?

¡¡¡¡Dashan: We didn't have a formal class together. I learn cross talk1 from him just by being together with him, watching his performances, talking about it and watching him in daily life.

¡¡¡¡Zhao: Cross talk is a traditional form of Chinese comedic dialogue, and is there any form of comedic dialogue like cross talk in Canada, or any other western country?

¡¡¡¡Dashan: You know I really just prefer to call it Xiangsheng. If you look into the dictionary, you look upon "Xiangsheng," the dictionary will say "cross talk." But if you ask a foreigner if he has ever heard of cross talk, he always says no. In English, we never talk about cross talk. Nobody ever calls comedy skits cross talk. But we have standª²up2 comedy, we have comic dialogue, we have skit. Those are very similar to cross talk. It all depends on your definition. If you think cross talk is one person or two doing a comedy dialogue or talking jokes, every culture, every language in the world has a similar type of performances. One thing that makes cross talk very interesting is that it's usually one complete story or one topic whereas the western standup comedy is usually just a series of separated jokes.