His Chinese teaching name is Ma. “It means horse,” explains Christian Mothershead, a teacher at the only Chinese language school that teaches children Chinese language from K-4 to 8th grade.
His fluent Chinese tells me he has been around the block. Christian explains how it all began, “I had to take a foreign language course in high school and I did not like most of the choices, but Chinese looked pretty interesting so I choose that.”
Christian seemed to pick the language up rather easily so in 1995 he decided to “sink or swim” and moved to Taiwan. “It was total emersion and no one really spoke English, it was tough,” he says shaking his head. He reminisces about the struggles and the culture shock. “Out of all of it I miss the food the most,” he laughs.
In 1996 Christian took a trip to Cambodia that was rather hair rising. “We were stranded in the middle of a jungle port and my Khmer (Cambodia language) was not good at all. We were told that the Khmer Rouge was all around us and hated Westerners. It was getting dark and the whole atmosphere was really scary. We did not think we would get out of there alive, but the boat finally came,” said Christian.
