A petite, blonde American has become a pop-culture hit for her online American slang lessons for Chinese viewers. Provided to China Daily

An online language teacher's quirky style attracts a huge following with OMG!, Todd Balazovic discovers.

It may be awhile before schools in China begin including cryptic American slang like "totes magotes" or "Badonkadonk" in their English curriculum. But for now, Chinese students are navigating the puzzling world of American slang with the assistance of Jessica Beinecke, host of Voice of America's online English-teaching program OMG Meiyu.

Beinecke is helping millions of Chinese students unlock the mysteries of less formal English vocabulary through her massively popular online show.

She says sharing American slang with overseas English learners promotes understanding between two cultures that are seemingly worlds apart.

"I think the best way for people on the opposite sides of the earth to understand each other is to share each other's culture and language," she says.

The 24-year-old's episode on 'yucky gunk', geared toward teaching less formal ways of referring to the fluids stuck in the eyes when one wakes up, recently attracted more than 1.5 million hits from Chinese Web users.

By teaching a phrase like "Badonkadonk", referring to one's posterior, or "totes magotes", which stands for "totally", Beinecke says she is offering viewers a more entertaining way to learn American English.

"I think the show makes English learning fun - and when you're having fun learning something, you're much happier doing it," she says.

"We are so lighthearted," she recently told The Washington Post. "I dance to Lady Gaga and . . . talk about boogers. It's a one-on-one conversation with an American."

While the show has rapidly continued building its online popularity since beginning its broadcast onto China's twittersphere in July, Beinecke's journey to Internet stardom began with a travel show for Voice of America's Mandarin service.

Her adventures have taken her from New York to Las Vegas, where Beinecke shared the beauty of a drive-through wedding with her Chinese followers. "I don't know what's more American than that," she says.

For her English-teaching show, the energetic blonde bounces around her Washington, DC apartment, where simple two-minute daily "webisodes" of OMG Meiyu are voiced in Mandarin before being posted on popular Chinese websites.

Fans seem delighted to hear fluent Mandarin from such an unlikely looking source, Ren Yuyang, 23, a Chinese native who produces the show, told the Post. "She looks like just what Chinese people think Americans look like," Ren said.

And even though Beinecke steps into the role of teacher, the lessons often go two ways, with Chinese viewers candidly correcting her Mandarin in the comment sections of the show.

Corrections, however, are few and far between for Beinecke, who's been studying the language for just five years. She earned her a bachelor's degree in Mandarin and public relations from Ohio University; she also had the chance to study in China, in Beijing as well as Hangzhou.

She says she was drawn to the language because of her long history of studying music, her area of interest before she began studying Mandarin. "I find Mandarin to be a very musical language. The tones are quite beautiful," she says.

In her English show, Beinecke ventures beyond the bound world of dictionary definitions, exploring words and phrases that seem more at home in a college dormitory or high school hallway.

Lessons range from modern phrases, with one lesson focused solely on the different meanings of dead ("you're dead meat" or "dead wrong") to time-tested idioms, such as "apple of my eye". In another episode, she explains the nuances behind using phrases like "silent but deadly" and "totally stinky" to refer to unpleasant odors.

Other expressions now familiar to OMG! watchers: "rocking a dress", "sweating bullets" and having a "muffin top".

So why is it important to learn US slang? "It's not just about learning the language. I'm also teaching viewers about American culture," she tells China Daily. "These are the topics that American kids are talking about."

The platform of OMG Meiyu, which translates to "OMG American Language", has moved beyond just Weibo, Youku and YouTube. An iPhone application lets users download the latest episode.

Beinecke may be responsible for presenting the content, but she credits the swiftly growing number of online followers for much of the inspiration for the show's topics.

"Every weekend I ask them what they want to learn, and we get hundreds of answers. I don't know if this would have been as successful if I couldn't interact with the viewers personally," she says.

The simple show has attracted more than 120,000 Weibo followers, mostly teenagers and Chinese college students studying in both the US and China.

Chinese viewers know her by the name Bai Jie, a moniker given to Beinecke by her Chinese roommate while she was studying Mandarin in Hangzhou. Later she discovered there is also a Chinese porn novel called Bai Jie, which means white and pure; unfazed, she kept her name.

She actively engages her online followers in daily conversation, encouraging English comments.

Many of Beinecke's followers exhibit nothing but unbridled affection for the young host - and aren't afraid to express themselves using the slang learned in the show. Comments like "I am obsessed with @ OMG U.S. language, I dig it very much. Bai Jie is totes cool" litter her Weibo microblog account.

The show's recent rise in popularity has even pushed one follower to form an OMG Meiyu fan group on Weibo. "Our online friends are so supportive and so encouraging," Beinecke says. "They are sort of inspired to write something in English and practice what they just learned."

OMG Meiyu may have earned Beinecke a minor star status online, but the host says fame and fortune is the last thing on her mind.

"I don't know if I'm a celebrity, but I don't really know if that's my goal," she says, adding that she simply wants to share US culture.

Beinecke told the Washington Post that she recently ran into a fan, Wang Jiawei, 21, a recent immigrant from China who was working in a Taiwanese tea shop where Beinecke was filming her travel show.

"American language is quite different from what we learn (in college)", he tells her in heavily accented English. "We learn how to write papers about marketing. She teaches us how the young guys talk. Yeah, she's cool."

You can contact the writer at toddbalazovic@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 11/27/2011 page4)