Chinese bridge communication for American Contestant on Kpop Star contest

It was surreal, even the Korean TV station added exclamation about how strange it was.

An American young man who can speak FOUR languages, including English, Korean, Japanese and MANDARIN Chinese took part in Kpop Star Contest (on free channel 823, organized by JPYE SM Entertainment and YG, different from the one on 824 which was organized by CUBE). He wasn’t really a good singer, and failed to show his uniqueness because he was following Lady Gaga’s performance almost to a T.

Even-though he might not end up as a Kpop singer, he had managed to impress the CEO of JYPE, Mr Park Jin Young with his command of the four languages (and personally I am impressed by his never-say-die attitude and polite manners), and Mr Park welcome him to work in JYPE as long as he doesn’t audition as a singer. JYPE has branches in China and America, and I am not surprised perhaps even Japan?! JYPE singers might not be as globally famous as SM Entertainment’s Super Junior or SNSD, but JYPE’s Wonder Girls, 2PM, Miss A and my only Kpop love 2AM are popular and well-loved too. JYPE Miss A would be releasing Mandarin album, I won’t be surprised if 2PM follow suit soon, as both MISS A and 2PM members have weibo account, China’s answer to twitter (and in my opinion better than twitter).

Anyway, in order to let the American young man understood the judges’ comments and the reason they eliminated him from the contest, the Chinese member, Jia, from the popular Kpop group MISS A, interpreted the comment in MANDARIN Chinese. In fact, before this contestant sang, he actually conversed with Jia in very fluent Mandarin, and he was so good that Jia commented that his command of the Chinese language could even be better than hers. After the Korean judges commented in Korean, the viewers heard Chinese interpretation of the comment spoken to the American young man (whom I forgot to mention, is not Asian), and the comment “This is kind of weird…” was superimposed on the scene by the tv station.

Picture this: Korean comments, interpreted to an American Caucasian young man, in Chinese. Wow, that really made my day. This is what I suppose GLOBALIZATION truly means… ^^

P.S. this American young gentleman can even use the chopsticks in the correct way, much better than some Chinese who were born and bred in Asia.

What can I say? I have never believed that Chinese is too hard for anyone to learn, and I also don’t believe one can only master ONE language.

I have also watched another American young man (who is an ethnic Chinese born and bred in America) on a Chinese program speaking Chinese fluently though with a little foreign accent. He never started learning Chinese till he was in his 20s, and he has no problem speaking it or understand it now.

Many-a-times we faced obstacles that were placed by others, or factors we had no control over. But sometimes, we placed the obstacles there ourselves. Some such obstacles could be removed completely…for example…

If I want to learn Korean, I would have to:
1. Be willing to put in time and effort to practice
2. Seek our various resources, be it reading materials, audio or video resources, dictionaries, courses
3. Be willing to speak it, listen to it, read it, write it, until I master it
4. Accept all forms of exercises and assessments to help me master it

I might be too old to master FOUR languages like the first American young man I mentioned, but I would squeeze in time to learn conversational Korean even if it takes me more than 2 years. One of my role model is also related to Kpop. Mr Park Jin Young, the CEO of JYPE. He can speak Korean, Japanese and English. I hope one day he will also start learning Chinese.

与大家共勉之。

If you want to see the footage of the American young man, it starts from 1:01:12.