Ammar's Silk Road dream
- By staff reporter Li Ying
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E-mail China Today, March 13, 2017
Ammar Albaadani, aged 39, is from a working family in Ibb in southern Yemen. He has a clear memory from his childhood of a Chinese medical team based in his hometown providing the local people with medical assistance. When he was 13, Ammar's father suffered a facial paralysis, but fortunately the Chinese doctors were able to cure him using acupuncture. Since then, Ammar has always had a great admiration for China: "Back then I dreamed of studying in China. In my heart I built a 'Silk Road' to the East."
From Sinophile to Old China Hand
By virtue of his excellent academic performance at high school, in 1996 Ammar became one of 11 students chosen for a government-sponsored study program in China. He first attended a preparatory Chinese-language course at Shandong University. Two years later, he started his bachelor's degree and Master's program at Tianjin Medical University. In 2008, he went on to pursue a doctorate in Medicine at Zhejiang University. During his summer and winter vacations Ammar travelled across China. The more he sees of the country, the more he loves it.
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Ammar Albaadani, shown holding his award, is the first Arab to win the “Chinese Bridge” Chinese language proficiency competition for foreign students. |
"I see the Chinese language as a gorgeous lady who is captivating and confusing at the same time. I'm deeply in love with this language, but I am so afraid of being unable to win her love." With a consuming passion, Ammar came up with a "crazy" way to study Chinese which helped him to attain intermediate level in the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test in a mere six months. It usually takes a foreigner two years or more to get to this level. While studying in Tianjin, Ammar spent much of his spare time in teahouses watching crosstalk shows with the aim of better understanding the culture and mindset implicit in the language. Tianjin is famous as a cradle of traditional Chinese folk arts, including crosstalk. When he later moved to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, Ammar took lessons from a renowned folk artist and gradually made a reputation for himself locally as a popular crosstalk comedian.
His language-learning efforts were further rewarded in 2009 by winning first prize in the Chinese Bridge language proficiency competition for foreign students. It was the first time an Arab had won the Chinese Bridge gold award. At the final, Ammar said: "My life in China is 'a Silk Road dream.' I have lived in various cities in both north and south, and my experiences in this country have been like a series of dreams, each linking one to the next. I wish to be a piece of the bridge connecting China and Arab countries." His fluent Chinese has been a huge help in developing his career in China. Meanwhile the exposure from his win on Chinese Bridge has brought him a series of offers from TV shows.
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