Native Chinese Speaker in Berlin, Experienced Chinese Teacher, currently a Ph.D. Student in Political Science

Find out more about Pei

• Wie kommt es, dass Du fließend Mandarin sprichst? Hängt dies mit Deiner Herkunft zusammen oder hat einst ein/e Lehrer/in die Leidenschaft dafür in Dir geweckt?

  I am a native speaker. I grew up in Southern China speaking Mandarin, Wu Chinese, and Cantonese. My college years in Beijing definitely helped me understand the Northern-Southern differences in Mandarin-speaking much better. Aside from being a language tutor, I am also a political science researcher and a freelance interpreter, both of which require excellent linguistic skills.

• Nenne uns eine Persönlichkeit, egal ob lebend, historisch oder fiktiv, die für Dich die chinesische Kultur am besten repräsentiert!

  For me, the best presenter of Chinese culture is not Confucius but Laozi. As the founder of Taoism, Laozi had the pioneering vision of universe and existence, which exerted unprecedented but underrated influences to the people after him. His thoughts, just like the Chinese languages, including Mandarin, appear confusing and vague at first sight. Once into it, one may find it comprehensive, systematic, and beautiful!

• Gibt es im Chinesischen, ein Wort, einen Ausdruck, eine Tradition oder eine typische Verhaltensweise, die Dich ganz besonders beeindruckt oder amüsiert?

  I love the Chinese character "囧." Because of its unique shape, it means "window" in the dictionary. However, Chinese netizens now use it to express that someone has awkward feelings because it also looks like a face a man would make when he feels awkward.

• Warum ist es Deiner Meinung nach so wichtig, diese Sprache zu beherrschen (sei es in Bezug auf Schule / Studium, Beruf oder aus persönlichen Gründen)?

  The booming economy in China is only one of the reasons to study Mandarin. I think language learning is a great opportunity to learn about a different culture and other ways of thinking. For Europeans, learning and mastering Mandarin is such a challenging but rewarding task.

• Worin liegt die besondere Schwierigkeit, wenn es darum geht, chinesisch zu lernen ?

  Based on my personal observation, there are two most distinguished difficulties in learning Mandarin for my students. The first is to memorize the written characters, which have nothing to do with their pronunciations. The second is to learn how to combine different characters to form a "word." For example, "奶" is milk, but "奶奶" means grandma, and "奶瓶" means milk bottle.

• Gibt es im Zusammenhang mit dieser Sprache eine Anekdote aus Deinem Berufsleben oder Deiner Schulzeit, von der Du uns erzählen möchtest?

  In Chinese, when "East (东)" and "West (西)" can be combined and used to refer to lifeless things, i.e., "东西" = "lifeless things." When I told that to a student, he immediately said, "我们都不是东西。" （" neither of us is EastWest.") I laughed so hard because "不是东西" is quite an insult in Mandarin, similar to "you are such a pig" in English. It is only used when you want to say that somebody is inhumane.

• Hilf uns, Dich ein wenig besser kennenzulernen, und erzähle uns ein wenig mehr über Deine bisherigen Reisen und/oder Auslandsaufenthalte.

  This is a detailed introduction I wrote about myself in the advertisement on Superprof. "Born and grew up in China, I started teaching Chinese to exchanged foreign students for a part-time job at the university when I studied in Beijing. I moved to Singapore to get my master degree in International Relations, where I worked full-time in a consultancy and at the National University of Singapore as a researcher. During my time of study and work in Singapore, I continued teaching people interested in Chinese learning, just because to me it's so much fun to be able to help others and present my own culture via language teaching. I am currently doing my Ph.D. at FU, Berlin, and I am looking forward to helping more that are interested in Chinese learning."

• Kurz und knapp: Was macht aus Dir einen Superprof?

  I am detailed oriented. I pay great attention to what each of my students wants from Mandarin learning and what type of learners they are. My goal in teaching Mandarin is not to make every student speak "perfect" Mandarin. The most important thing for them is to enjoy this challenging yet rewarding process, so that in the end, Mandarin, together with Chinese culture, will be an interesting chapter and part of their personal memories in the running of time.