14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Zuckerberg just impressed everyone by showing off during a Q&A session at the Tsinghua University in Beijing where he decided to speak in Mandarin.
If you remember, a few years back, in 2010 more exactly, Zuckerberg decided that his aim for the year was to learn to speak Mandarin. He has since set a lot of similar goals for himself. In 2011, he vowed to eat animals only if he had killed them, which received a mixture of backlash and praise from animal-rights activists.
In 2013, Zuckerberg wanted to meet a new person outside of Facebook every day, have face to face conversations and so on. This year’s goal was to write a thoughtful thank-you note every day. These are all methods in which the young Facebook CEO hopes to better himself, which is, of course, admirable.
As the video posted on Facebook proves, Zuckerberg is pretty serious about it all and he doesn’t take things lightly. His self-appointed task to learn how to speak Mandarin has certainly paid off since the man behind the world’s largest social network seems to be fluent at it.
“On Wednesday I did my first ever public Q&A in Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing! We discussed connecting the world, Internet.org, innovation and the early days of Facebook. Earlier this week I joined the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Advisory Board. Tsinghua is an amazing center of learning and research, and it has been inspiring to be with so many talented future Chinese leaders,” Zuckerberg wrote on his profile page, along with the video of the Q&A.
Learning Mandarin for himself and his wife
While we may not exactly know what he was actually saying in the video, the audience seems to be enthralled that Zuckerberg is speaking Mandarin, laughing when he makes jokes and so on.
He was asked why he speaks Chinese by the interviewer, he said he has three reasons, the first being that his wife is Chinese. The second iss that he likes the Chinese culture, while the third was that he likes challenges.
When he took on the 2010 personal challenge, Zuckerberg said that he had always been interested in the Chinese culture and learning a language is a great way to learn about a culture. He noted that some of the family of his then-girlfriend, Priscilla, only speak Mandarin, so he hoped he could get to converse with them more easily.
The two have married since then and it seems like Zuck may have gotten the practice he was looking for.