Row Row Row Your Boat, a traditional English nursery rhyme, which is still popular today, has enjoyed a second wave of popularity thanks to a Chinese farmer.
划船歌(节选)
Row row row your boat
划、划、划你的船
Gently down the stream
慢慢地顺流而下
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
愉快地,愉快地划
Life is but a dream
人生不过是一场梦
Liu Tao, a middle-aged farmer from Yangshuo, Guilin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, loves English and nicknames himself "Teacher Liu" on a short video platform. Netizens are amused by his funny accent, and tease him calling him "Bro Shank You".
"In the 1980s, so many international friends came to visit Yangshuo that they even outnumbered the Chinese people on the street. When seeing me, they would say hello," Liu said. From then on, he dreamed of being an English tour guide.
He then returned home to do farm work, but he never stopped learning English. Borrowing a textbook from a friend, Liu began homeschooling.
"Practice makes perfect. Only when I repeat one sentence several times, can I bear it in mind." Liu even has a manual of oral English where he wrote down many dialogues applied in different scenarios.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled the local tourism, Liu remains true to his original aspiration. He turned to a short-video platform to introduce his hometown in both Chinese and English.
Some people mock Liu's accent, but most of them show their support for him after hearing his story. "If you had been him, most of you might have surrendered to the life." "He is pretty good at self-learning!" "I do admire his willpower in promoting his hometown."
Liu doesn't feel lost in the instant fame, as he knows too well how transient people's attention can be. But he does hope that the audience can get happiness and enjoy the picturesque landscape of his hometown from his videos.
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