Mark Zuckerberg's Chinese interview -- in Mandarin
SAN FRANCISCO- Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg participated in a question and answer session with college students Wednesday.
In Mandarin.
The audience at Tsinghua University in Beijing audibly gasped and then broke into applause when Zuckerberg took the microphone and greeted them in Mandarin, saying 大家好? "Da jia hao?" (Hello, everyone.)
He then went on to tell them, 我的中文很糟糕 "Wo de Zhongwen hen zaogao," (My Chinese is pretty terrible.) More applause.
Zuckerberg conducted the entire Q&A session in Chinese. He later posted the entire interview on Facebook.
Why do you speak Chinese? he was asked by the interviewer.
"There are three reasons," he told the audience. "The first is is that my wife is Chinese."
Zuckerberg married Priscilla Chan in 2012. A medical doctor, she was born in Massachusetts. However her mother only spoke Chinese and the family spoke Chinese at home.
When he wanted to ask his future mother-in-law for his wife's hand in marriage, he decided to do it in Chinese, which she liked, he said. He began studying the language in 2010.
The second reason was he likes Chinese culture, he told the audience.
The third reason was because "我喜欢挑战" "Wo xihuan tiaozhan." (I like challenges,) he said.
There's another challenge, which his use of Chinese might aid.
Facebook has been banned in China since 2009, but China is a country that every Internet company desperately wants a presence in.
Zuckerberg is working to build a presence in the country.
On Monday he joined the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Advisory Board, as he posted on his Facebook page.
Tsinghua is an old and highly regarded research university in Beijing. It is sometimes called "the MIT of China."
The interview, which is getting lots of positive attention in Chinese media, clearly sets him apart in the eyes of the Chinese.
While Zuckerberg's Mandarin was heavily accented and nowhere near perfect, it was clearly intelligible. The audience even laughed at his jokes.