William Chan is Still Struggling with Mandarin
Although William Chan (陳偉霆) started his entertainment career in Hong Kong’s music scene, the 34-year-old has found success in China by starring in popular dramas and variety shows. Despite working in China for many years, he is still having difficulties with his Mandarin and his co-star Yang Mi (楊冪) finds it hard to understand him.
Entering the Chinese market with 2013’s Swords of Legends <古劍奇譚>, William’s popularity continued to grow after appearing in The Mystic Nine Tetralogy <老九門>, Lost Love in Times <醉玲瓏> and Only Side by Side with You <南方有乔木>.
During the filming for fantasy drama Novoland: Pearl Eclipse <斛珠夫人>, William revealed that co-star Yang Mi (楊冪) complained about his Mandarin enunciation. He shared, “She said, ‘I actually don’t understand what you’re saying. You don’t need to recite the lines.’ Do you know how bad I felt?”
Although William has been working hard to improve his Mandarin and study his lines before filming, he feels discouraged when others say his speech is not clear. The crew would tell him to just speak in Cantonese since they find his Mandarin to be incomprehensible, and his voice would be dubbed in post-production editing anyway.
His discomfort with the language barrier has come up in other instances too. When William appeared as a mentor for variety show Gagman <認真的嘎嘎們>, one contestant deliberately spoke in Mandarin infused with a Hong Kong accent. Bothered by the tone of the contestant, William called out the student and said, “Are you making fun of me? Are you discriminating against me?”
While William is honest with his weakness, his fans are very supportive and insist that William’s Mandarin is improving. They love the actor for his gregarious personality and look forward to his next drama.
Source: HK01
This article is written by Sammi for JayneStars.com.
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again: he’s talentless and only got lucky with his fame in China. He’s not good looking, can’t act or sing, isn’t bilingual, and acts like he’s all that. The only thing he’s good at is kissing up. EEG must be happy they found a cash cow in him with Nic Tse slowly losing popularity.
@hazel Wow! That’s some dislike of him. Well, think of it this way. Talented people does not mean you can succeed and vise versa. You can say he’s got THE LUCK but I do believe even w/luck you yourself still need to work at a bit in order to be popular? Don’t people in all fields do suck up a bit especially i you work in the office? I personally hate seeing but hey it’s reality.
@wm2017 hazel might be a bit harsh, however, it’s not hard to learn mandarin especially if you live in that country for like years! You work, eat and live there, he has all the money and a lot of time and opportunities to improve his language skill, so many variety shows also mean he has to practice his mandarin more. So it’s true that he’s quite untalented and perhaps don’t care when it comes to learning mandarin.
@littlefish
True but as a language teacher, I can tell you that the length of time staying in a country does not determine whether you will learn a language or not. It is dependent on the individual, how motivated they are, and many other factors. William just isn’t motivated enough which I find sad. It is not hard for him to learn as he is in the environment but he just does not put out the effort to. Anyone can stay in a country for 30 years and still not know a word of the language there if they are not willing to put themselves out there, take classes and do whatever it takes to learn the language.
@hetieshou yup, that’s why I said he doesn’t care :p also the talented bit is when you have to work in the environment, forced to be in it, and still can’t improve, then it’s quite untalented :p
@hetieshou Exactly! Some just don’t have it in them period. Lol…I remember one of my mom’s friends who lived in HK for least over 40 years and her Cantonese was just so awful. haha NO joke. HKers thought she just came from mainland cuz the accent is just unreal. Her family teased her all the time. lol…She loves Kdramas but even w/Kdramas she watches its’s Cantonese dubbed version not like original language and bothers to look at subtitles. I remember some HK celebs also w/the worse Mandarin. Louis Koo& Ekin Cheng are the ones I most remember. And bbcs/abcs like Nicholas Tse/Edison Chen can speak well even if most of their early days it was just English. Some can probably say they are younger so younger people learn faster but I doubt that’s all there is to it. Some individuals either have it or not and of course on the efforts you put into it as well.
He’s indeed very fortunate to gain fame in China as a well recognised artist in China. Have to give credit to EEG. I noticed generally EEG artists can “make” it big in china compared to other artists from other HK companies.
Luck is definitely more important than talent,
@bennyjr
he signed onto a company that knows how to promote artists. eeg had always done well in hk and now china.
I wonder if Yang Mi ex husband Hawick Lau mandarin are any good since he’s from Hong Kong also?
@cutie777 His Mandarin is not that bad. Not native fluent of course but way better than Ekin Cheng & Louis Koo’s. haha lol
@wm2017 oh good otherwise she’ll probably complaining about his mandarin also. She probably understand some Cantonese too since her ex husband speaks Cantonese and his parents.