By Guo Ying

There are few things that can excite students about class on weekends, but crosstalk artist Ding Guangquan’s Saturday afternoon sessions are always full of eager students from around the world.

Crosstalk performer Ding is well known throughout China not only for his own quick wit, but also for his work teaching China’s traditional crosstalk to foreign students.

Ding’s work with foreign students initially caught the public eye in 1989, when Ding’s first foreign apprentice Mark Rowswell, commonly known among Chinese audience as Da Shan, put on a crosstalk performance on CCTV and received widespread praise throughout China. Da Shan has since become a household name in China and is not Ding’s only student to succeed on the crosstalk stage. Many of his other students such as Julien Gaudfroy from France and David Moser from the US, have also become regular television and stage performers.

Known as xiangsheng in Chinese, crosstalk is one of China’s most popular performing arts. Performances generally involve a pair of comedians entertaining audiences with a combination of word play, puns and allusions that draw heavily on Chinese language and history.

Talking about his efforts to promote crosstalk, Ding said, “It has been a long-cherished dream of several crosstalk artists to introduce crosstalk to other countries. But it will lose its original flavor if crosstalk scripts are translated into English. I think imparting crosstalk skills to foreigners in China can be an alternative way to spread the knowledge of crosstalk around the world.”

“However, it is really difficult for foreigners to understand and communicate the gist and sense of humor of crosstalk to Chinese audiences because of different cultural background. So they need guidance on performing crosstalk,” Ding added.

In teaching his students, Ding stresses the importance of “practice makes perfect,” and says he favors a flexible teaching method to help foreigners master the informal nuances of crosstalk. The master performer makes sure to give students time to practice crosstalk in class and then offers suggestions for students about how to improve their act.

Ding considers the teaching of crosstalk as an “interest-based Chinese teaching method.” “In studying Chinese, you are not simply studying the Chinese language, but also Chinese culture, and crosstalk is its gateway. As crosstalk scripts draw on every aspect of Chinese culture, from history and folk tales to contemporary social issues, it is undoubtedly an interesting way of learning,” Ding said.

One of Ding’s students, Cameroonian PhD student Francis Tchiegue, says that his Chinese has improved greatly as a result of studying crosstalk. “Learning crosstalk provides a great opportunity for me to improve my Chinese level. Chinese traditional culture is so profound and complex that you feel interested in it, but it feels hard to get close to. Crosstalk is undoubtedly a gateway. Through crosstalk, I have been able to grasp a larger vocabulary and learnt many Chinese idioms and wisecracks that help me to speak Chinese in a more natural and humorous way,” he said.

Even as Ding and his apprentices such as Da Shan have gained in popularity, Ding continues to teach his students for free. Ding says that he finds great joy in his role as a guide to Chinese culture and maintains close friendships with most of his students, even officiating at one student’s weddings.

Ding’s successful teaching methods have also aroused the interest of Chinese language teaching experts, who see crosstalk as a good way to introduce students to Chinese culture, history and language. When asked about the growing interest in Chinese language around the world and the Chinese government’s efforts to promote the language, Ding responded excitedly that, “It is really good news that more and more Confucius Institutes are being established overseas. They provide much more opportunities for Chinese language enthusiasts. I am thinking about cooperating with these Confucius Institutes and adding crosstalk to the curriculum.”