It's more for adults than children

I participated in China Central Television's 1999 Spring Festival gala in a crosstalk (a form of humorous dialogue) show with Mark Henry Rowswell - who's known in China as Dashan ("Big Mountain") - and other expats, including some from the former Yugoslavia and some from Africa. At the time, we were all students of Ding Baoquan, a crosstalk master.

It was the first and busiest New Year I have spent in China. I performed on the stage and my wife and our 2-year-old daughter sat in front of the TV watching the show.

Every act had to rehearse and perform run-throughs. Every time we did a run-through we changed the script by adding something. We rehearsed for weeks and weeks; the process took two months in total.