Zhang Qian

    zhqcindy@163.com

    WEARING traditional Chinese costumes and mimicking the walking style of ancient Chinese fair ladies, Uliana Ivanova won rounds of applause and cheers from the audience at the Seventh Shenzhen Expats Chinese Talent Competition on Saturday.

    Ivanova impressed the judges and the audience not only with her fluent Chinese, but also her sense of humor, which got everyone laughing.

    The Russian contestant made a stunning first appearance on the stage for the speech presentation round by performing a Chinese rap that she had written. During the other rounds and in dialogue with the hosts, Ivanova also filled the room with laughter. Ivanova won the third prize.

    The Russian, who works at a well-known drone-making company in Shenzhen, said she learned Chinese through hilarious jokes and fun dialogues.

    “Chinese humor, Russian humor and American humor are totally different and when I began to learn Chinese back in Russia, I did not understand the Chinese-style humor at all,” said Ivanova.

    It wasn’t until she came and stayed in China’s northeastern provinces for a few months that Ivanova began to love the language for its special sense of humor and the way people use it. “I really enjoyed talking with people from North China because their conversations were so fun,” Ivanova said in Chinese.

    After graduating from university in Russia, Ivanova moved to China and spent several months in Beijing and Guangzhou before settling in Shenzhen, where she found a stable job one year ago.

    “I think some popular Internet language invented by netizens is actually the modern version of Chinese idioms, because they are expressing a lot of meanings in such short phrases.”

    Ivanova once won a prize for her translation of a piece of Mo Yan’s literary work. Mo is China’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. “Through study I found his use of language was full of humor and wisdom,” said Ivanova.