(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-03 10:10

Tchiegue with his Chinese fans.Photos courtesy of Francis Tchiegue

When Francis Tchiegue first arrived at Beijing International Airport in late 2003, the 32-year-old Cameroonian expected to see fighting in the streets just like in a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan film. He was disappointed, but only for a moment.

"It suddenly struck me that it was only in films and a whole lot of new things here had yet to be explored," he says.

In the coming years, he began to develop an obsession with the Chinese language and art forms, such as xiangsheng (crosstalk), Peking Opera and face changing, while his main purpose here was to pursue a PhD in aeronautics and computer sciences.

Back in Cameroon, he had already mastered 10 languages and held various positions - math teacher, radio broadcaster, television anchorman and United Nation's official among them.

"It's always been easy for me to learn foreign languages. At first I even thought that if I couldn't master Chinese, no other foreigners could," he says with a naughty grin.

However, all his assets seemed to be of little help when he hit the long, hard road of learning Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University.

One of his teachers gave him the name Jie Gai. While the name, similar in pronunciation with his French one, had no specific meaning, he loved it.

"There are too many characters to remember, and they are all square. It always took me a long time to draw a single character."

Different from the basic 26 letters of the English language, every Chinese character was formed with a unique sound and meaning. Tchiegue says sometimes he felt like an "alien" when thinking and speaking in Chinese.

"There are four tones for pronunciation. When I speak, I need to concentrate in order to find the right tone to use. At first I couldn't even say 'ni hao' (hello) correctly."

Fortunately, he had a stick-to-it mentality to get him through one hardship after another. "There are so many people in China. All of them can speak Chinese, so why can't I?"

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