Who the !#%(@ is Da Shan?

This guy.  

He's basically the most famous white-person in China but completely unknown outside of the country and despised by most, if not all, foreigners trying to learn Chinese in the country.  He even has a ridiculous name: 大山, Da Shan ("Big Mountain").  You have to be kidding me, Mark Henry Rowswell. 

He's really famous because he hosts a show on CCTV-9 (English channel) teaching foreigners how to speak Chinese.  Many Chinese even believe that he speaks more clearly/ better than most Chinese. I have to admit that this is true, but is quite remarkable for the Chinese people to say this too. 

His TV segments are kind of "The Wiggles" meets "Mr. Rogers" meets China CCTV.  He sits at a desk or on a stool wearing solid color shirts with the overlay boxes displaying the sentences he's teaching and repeats them slowly and articulately.  Then there are little role-plays that he introduces which are followed by another Da Shan teaching minute. 

Apparently he has all sorts of TV performances and skits, of which I've never seen because after all the "Learn Chinese" shows I've seen, he really makes me cringe. 

"The Chinese people immediately fell in love with his big eyes, sexy hair, expressive facial features and aura of cleverness."

He was even allowed to carry the Olympic Torch in 2008 in a city that granted him honorary citizenship and that he considers his hometown.

Da Shan is the ultimate symbol to China of a Westerner being fascinated by the Chinese culture and fully immersing themselves in the culture (which we are always reminded is the oldest civilization in existence) and pretty much giving up living in the Western world to live in China.  Not to mention speaking ridiculously good Chinese. 

So thanks, Da Shan, for making the rest of us Chinese students look like idiots.  But on a larger scale, fueling the Chinese desire to essentially take over the West and the belief that Chinese culture is unquestionably superior over the rest in the world.