American guy with perfect Chinese becomes popular for imitating different Chinese and English accents
Alia | April 27th, 2012 - 4:48 pm
Mike Sui, an American guy living in Beijing posted a short video of himself imitating different Chinese and English accents on Sina Weibo yesterday afternoon. The clip soon went viral, with over 140K reposts and over 20k comments within hours.
“Hello, everybody. I’m a foreign loser, Mike Sui. I speak perfect Chinese but find nowhere to show off my talent. Tragic! I cannot go to Star Boulevard (China’s American Idol-like TV show) because I cannot sing nor dance. I don’t want to participate in contests for Chinese-speaking foreigners because I don’t see myself as a foreigner. Even my girlfriend always shouts at me, ‘Talking, talking, talking. What else you can do except talking…’ So…here I am showing people my talking talents! Funny scene at 7:05~”
And this guy is not exaggerating. He does speak perfect Chinese and he’s got talents. In the video clip, he role-played a Beijinger with Beijing accent, a Mandarin-speaking Chinese with Chinglish, a Taiwanese, a Hong Kong man, a Caucasian American, an African American, a Japanese, a Russian, a French, an African, a New Yorker and a gay, all with very distinct character and accents.
The Riviera Times…
[...]American guy with perfect Chinese becomes popular for imitating different Chinese and English accents | Offbeat China[...]…
I don’t know if he can be called a ‘language genius’ when he’s half-Chinese and grew up in China since the age of ten. I’m not criticising, and actually I think the video is hilarious and he’s very talented, I just think we should commend his acting and mimicry skills rather than his language skills.