For many South Africans, Allan Pei has found a way to make Mandarin feel less foreign and more like something you might hear in an everyday conversation.
Known online as Allan Sensei, the 29-year-old Chinese-South African content creator has built a fast-growing audience by doing something simple: teaching Chinese phrases through South African languages and familiar, everyday situations.
He speaks four languages – English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa and Mandarin – and includes the Shanghai dialect, or Shanghainese, as his fifth.
Born in South Africa to Chinese parents from Shanghai, Allan grew up with one foot in Cradock, a small town in the Eastern Cape province, and the other in a home shaped by Chinese language and tradition.
"Because my parents are immigrants, they're still very traditional Chinese. So, when they moved to South Africa, they didn't speak any English, they just spoke Chinese and had to learn how to communicate with the locals. Whereas for me, from a young age, I could pretty much just speak with everyone because of my environment," he recalled, chatting to CGTN via video call.
For Allan, ordinary childhood moments, like playing with other children, visiting their homes and going to parties, became his language classroom.
"I didn’t know it at the time that I was blending the cultures. When I’m out the house I have to speak a different language, think differently, and it’s so diverse. There were White kids, Colored kids, Black kids that I got to mix with, and then as soon as I got home, everything changed into Chinese. My homework was in English, but the family speaks Chinese," he said. "I kind of just saw myself as adapting to the two cultures and learning from both sides."
His ability to adapt, ask questions and keep connecting shaped the way Allan learnt languages.