Madness In The Middle Kingdom

As the Olympic athletes march into the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing this August the second loudest cheers will be for Team Canada (obviously the cheers will be loudest for Team China). The reason for this is one person - Dashan aka Mark Rowswell who has been named Team Canada’s attache to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Just who is Dashan?

Dashan, AKA Mark Rowswell, is a multi-faceted performer and cultural ambassador who has been called “the most famous foreigner in China”. Although relatively unknown in the West, it’s hard to find anyone in China who does not know of Dashan.

Born and raised in Canada, Rowswell began studying Chinese in the mid 1980s, first at the University of Toronto and later at Beijing University. While in Beijing, Rowswell became interested in Chinese performing arts, particularly xiangsheng, a popular form of comic dialogue. A chance opportunity to appear on television suddenly gave Rowswell national exposure under the stage name “Dashan”. Repeated appearances on programs with an audience of up to 1 billion viewers gradually turned “Dashan” into a household name across China.

In China relatively few foreigners speak Mandarin fluently and Dashan was the pioneer in this area. His Chinese has been described as “perfect”. In 2001 he visited our school and the students and Chinese staff went absolutely insane. When he was introduced the emcee who was a Chinese national introduced him in English because the emcee was embarassed at his own level of Mandarin when compared to Dashan.

Here is a brief video of Dashan doing a commercial for the BC - Canada pavilion which recently opened in Beijing

When I was travelling to meet Alice’s family for the first time they were curious to know what my level of Chinese was. They kept asking “Is he as good as Dashan?’

Clearly not!