"Laowai" in China | Venezuelan expat dedicated to promoting Tianjin cross-talk in Spanish-speaking world

Xinhua
08 May 2025, 14:45 GMT+10

(250508) -- TIANJIN, May 8, 2025 (Xinhua) -- Raydis Franco practices kuaiban, a form of Chinese storytelling accompanied by bamboo clappers, at his home in north China's Tianjin, April 25, 2025. Spanish teacher Raydis Franco from Venezuela works at the School of Foreign Studies in Nankai University in Tianjin. He came to China on a cultural exchange program and started his seven-year study at Tianjin University in 2015. The past decade has turned this 36-year-old man a fluent speaker of Chinese.

Tianjin is dubbed a cradle for cross-talk, a traditional yet higly popular Chinese comedic art. Franco fell in love with this art and started to learn from professional performers and to practice what he has acquired via live performances at tea houses.

In 2023, Franco, already a faculty member at Nankai University, joined a promotion program for Tianjin cross-talk culture targeting the Spanish-speaking world. Together with his colleagues and students, Franco has endeavored to create some excellent cross-talk works into colloquial Spanish that integrate humor elements of both languages, and to circle them around the world through the Internet.

Franco hopes to study cross-talk in a more profound way for what he loves is not merely the cross-talk, but the rich history and culture of China. "By learning cross-talk, I feel closely linked to the Chinese culture," said Franco. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

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