1. What’s your story? How did you get into all these languages?

I grew up in a small, remote town in southwest China, far from the big cities (Beijing, Shanghai) or the world’s spotlight—think farther than Cipolletti in Patagonia is from Buenos Aires. In my hometown, even standard Mandarin wasn’t commonly spoken.

My dad taught English at the local high school. He didn’t give me private lessons, but his bookshelf was full of books I could learn from. I also read letters from his old American teacher.

Until I was 16, I thought English was all I needed to see the world. Then two French women came to town by bike, and they needed some help. The local officials asked my dad to translate, and I went with him. English didn’t work as smoothly as I expected. When the two ladies spoke to each other, I heard French for the first time in my life. That sound was amazing. So, I decided to study French in college, and two years later I enrolled in the French department at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

At university, I got curious about other languages. I really liked Romance languages, and I found Italian and Spanish even more exciting than French. I also met my wife, Wang Wei (Letizia), in the French department.

After graduating, I became a sports journalist and was sent to Europe by Titan Sports, China’s top sports newspaper（www.ttplus.cn). I’ve been living in Italy for 22 years now. My language skills improved after moving here—living and traveling in Europe gave me a deep dive into the languages. I love Brazilian music, which helped me learn Portuguese over time. English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are the languages I use most for work, like interviewing players, while Chinese is the language I write in.

My love for Barcelona and the Catalan singer Lluís Llach got me into Catalan. I also studied German and Norwegian out of cultural interest. I can chat in Catalan and German about everyday things, but my Norwegian is mostly just for reading.

Learning Hungarian was a bit of a random adventure. It started with the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai, whose books led me to a group of amazing early 20th-century Hungarian authors. I was hooked and started learning Hungarian. I find Hungarian super interesting—it doesn’t just borrow modern words like other languages, but creates new ones from its own roots, which feels less messy than, say, modern Chinese vocabulary. In 2018, my wife and I each translated a Hungarian novel into Chinese. 

2. Which language(s) do you wish you could spend more time practicing?

I’m working on improving my spoken Hungarian right now and also beginning to learn Modern Greek and Romanian. I really love Greek—it felt special from the start—but like Hungarian, it’s hard to find chances to practice outside of lessons with a teacher.

3. What are some languages you’d like to learn in the future?

My family and I are moving from Florence to northeast Italy near Slovenia in late 2025. I’m excited—and maybe it’s practical—to learn the two local languages there: Slovenian and Friulian. I’ve noticed that the trash cans in that area have labels in three languages (the third being Italian), so it feels like a fun language challenge waiting for me.

4. So let’s be honest, which language has the most charm for you?

Wow, that’s a tough one. “Sexy” in languages can mean so many things, and I’m stuck choosing! If I had to pick, I’d say it’s definitely not German—sorry, but German is just not the “sexy” type for me. Even Dutch is sexier than German.

5. What’s the greatest pleasure you get from speaking so many languages?

For me, languages are a huge help for life and work. I live in Europe and cover European football, but I’m a big fan of South American football—Brazil and Argentina especially. I read reports from Brazilian and Argentine media, and I think French, Spanish, and Portuguese football writing is way better than English. Knowing multiple languages has guided my career and given me ideas. If we’re talking about “pleasure,” I would say: it was a huge pleasure to discover an Argentine writer like Osvaldo Soriano, who also wrote a lot about football.

6. Some people say the world is really just going to have a few languages left in a hundred years. Do you think this is really true?

I’m no expert at predicting 2125. When I started learning French 25 years ago, people were already saying that tech would make language learning unnecessary. I didn’t listen then, and I don’t now. I just love learning languages, and that choice has helped me for 25 years—and it’s still helping. To me, learning a language is a personal decision (although the modern world is devouring our “personal decisions”). I am still hopelessly optimistic. I believe no matter how the world changes, there will always be people who learn languages because they love it. Big thanks to HYPIA for bringing such language lovers together.

7. What’s your message to young (and not so young) people out there who are interested in studying multiple languages?

Haha, I’m awful at giving advice—my suggestions are usually a mess. So, I’ll just share a quote from Kató Lomb: “Language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.”