David Wu, in full flow the man who once told Channel V audiences to Go West now turns his audience to the global English teaching market.
"Bring it on," says David Wu, a.k.a. the Wu Man, as we sit down to begin our interview. Fitting words from this jack of all trades - a man who has lent his personality to countless projects from film (Temptress Moon), event hosting, and, most famously, his hit Channel V show Go West, teaching hip American slang to Chinese youth.
More recently, he's been working on a new TV and radio project Talk da Talk, which is due to be released in China soon. "I like too many things," says Wu. "Radio is fun, but I can't do it every day because I'm always off to do something else." He reaches over to pour a glass of water for his interviewer. "And now I'm bartending," he laughs.
Life as a media personality began in 1986, when Wu dividing his time between college life at the University of Washington and summers in Taiwan, his home until the age of 13. Talent seekers frequently handed their cards on to Wu in the street, "and I decided that if someone gave me another card, I'd do it," he recalls.
Friends were skeptical of his showbiz ambitions, but sure enough, one day Wu called the number on the card. For the next few years, Wu spent his time traveling between Taiwan and Seattle. By the time he finished school (one semester at a time), he already had three movies in the can. "Then it was, 'Gee, what should I do now? Should I get a job at Nordstroms?" CHECK he laughs as he gets into his stride, an entertainer recounting The David Wu Story.
"Then someone calls one day," says Wu, putting on a rapid cartoon falsetto to mimic the caller from Hong Kong. "'I want you to come to Hong Kong, someone wants you to do a movie." Wu agreed to meet the folks in Hong Kong a week later, and informed his mother that he would be leaving. "I picked up and left, and never went back."
A question of hometown is a tough one for Wu to answer. His mother still lives in Seattle, his father is Cantonese, and his grandmother from Xi'an. He was born near Boston, then lived in Taipei, Hong Kong, and currently spends a large chunk of his time in Shanghai. "When people ask me where I'm from, I'm like, well, depends which part of my life you're talking about."
This lack of place is part of the secret of Wu's success, touching on cultural differences that comprise his cosmopolitan and global audiences around the world. "A lot of projects come along that require bilingual things," says Wu. "That's where my so-called background works out."
The main drawback in the pigeon-holed world of entertainment, however, is that Wu doesn't quite fit into one category. "I'm not American enough, not Chinese enough, not Cantonese enough, not enough of anything," says Wu. "I look different, talk different, walk different."
This difference has now culminated in what is probably Wu's most substantial project - teaching China about Western culture, "not to follow it, but to understand it," Wu emphasizes.
The show that made Wu's name was his English teaching show Go West, aired on Channel V from 1996. The show was originally conceived as an ongoing English classroom, until Wu worked with program makers to turn it into more palatable five-minute slots teaching slang. When station managers first suggested calling the show Go West, Wu objected. "I asked them, doesn't that mean die? As in gui xi - to pass on to heaven?" The channel decided to keep the title - and Wu incorporated his misgivings into patter for the show.
While most of his loyal fans are young people looking to pick up American banter, Wu says he has a surprisingly large number of middle aged adults among his audience. He recalls the time he was at the US embassy, and an American woman told him that her husband watches Go West. "I asked her, why would your husband watch my show - and she said, 'To learn Mandarin.'"
Wu's days as host of Go West are no more, although he has continued his work preaching American slang. Nowadays, he is maintaining the show's concepts for Talk da Talk, filmed on the road in Tahoe, Seattle, and New York City to keep a sense of the real language. "We're trying to get some scenery into it," he says, "making it like Go West shot on location." Meanwhile, a book has been created from the show, Show Your American English, which incorporates more dialogue than the original five-minute TV segments.
For the 37-year-old Wu, the main challenge is keeping up with the times if you're going to be a teacher of slang. "You gotta learn a lot, gotta read the books, the gossip columns, everything to know what the younger generations are thinking and what the older generations have already done."
"I don't want to say I'm an educator," says Wu. "I'm not. I'm an entertainer." But just as Li Yang, proponent of the world-famous Crazy English has found, the two do not need to be mutually exclusive in the minds of the paying public.
The 2008 Olympics in Beijing have focused the minds of the public on the need to be speaking English - and Wu hopes to be playing his part. "A lot of foreigners will come here thinking that Chinese people can't speak English," he says. "Hopefully, one day some Chinese guy will say something like 'Get off my back, Jack - and the tourist will be, like, 'Whoa, where did you learn that?' And the Chinese guy will say, 'David Wu, from Talk da Talk.'"
(cityweekend.com.cn December 24, 2003)
