'Indian Prince' in Singapore stuns with his fluent Mandarin, aims to fight stereotypes about India

When Aditya Talwar first arrived in Singapore from India in 2016, he watched his friends play mahjong and speak a language he could not fully understand.

Today, he has over 90,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel where he speaks fluent Mandarin (with subtitles too) on his videos – with topics ranging from his travels in India and Taiwan, and life when he was a Yale-NUS undergraduate.

Not often do you hear the greetings Namaste and Da jia hao together from a featured video that autoplays when you visit his YouTube channel.

"When I first started learning, I would receive a lot of compliments for speaking Mandarin.

"But at that point, my Mandarin was very bad," the 23-year-old said when he could only introduce himself and count to ten in the language.

In a Zoom interview with AsiaOne, he shared how people think Mandarin is such a difficult language, hence they are more likely to praise you if you can speak even the smallest amount.

He said: "[You] speak the language, but beyond a few basic sentences, a few words, you can't really have a deep conversation."

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0SYUNyJcnE[/embed]

The Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) major, who graduated in 2020 and currently works in Singapore, wanted to master the language to fit in, make friends, and interact with the locals here. So he took all the Chinese language classes he could from beginner to advanced levels in university.

And his mastery deepened after travelling to Taiwan in 2019 for a five-month exchange programme as well as starting his YouTube channel.

The media or Bollywood

For Talwar, who is from Punjab, that channel was created to challenge stereotypes people had of India. He said: "People base their understanding of Indians from the media, or [from] Bollywood."

"I wanted to break that stereotype and show people the different sort of variations of India," he added.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHR-_AgwVmo&t=50s[/embed]

For example, in one video, the self-taught content creator responded to a TikTok influencer who he said was creating "clickbait content" by travelling and presenting India in a bad light. That influencer, he said, was hitting the streets and eating the most unhygienic street food and claiming all such Indian food the same.

Hence, he created a US$1 Indian Street Food Challenge to highlight the best street food available. And he was surprised by the support – over 166,000 views – he got from that video and how his audience wanted to see a positive version of India.

Some of his favourite set of videos were travelling through India – from Jaipur to Taj Mahal. In these videos, you can watch him narrate his experiences in Mandarin, dispensing travel advice as well as interacting with locals in Hindi.

"[Online], most people are actually looking for something positive or looking for something real," he said.

Brush up on the language

When asked about his time in Taiwan, Talwar was able to grasp how the language is used day-to-day versus learning in the classroom.

He reached a level that allowed him to understand "the culture, the jokes and the nuances" while having conversations with the locals.

"When I first started learning Chinese, I don't think I was any better, or any more natural at the language than my classmates," he said.

He added it was all down to how much effort you want to put in – from spending an hour every morning to making the decision to study in Taiwan, where Mandarin is their national language.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, he found that as a foreigner, some are slightly embarrassed when you speak to them in Mandarin.

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He said: "Maybe they don't speak the language often at home, or they don't speak it often day-to-day." But in general, people around him were usually surprised or delighted when he spoke Mandarin.

Talwar felt that this can be a good reminder for Singaporeans to brush up their Mandarin – the same way he would feel when a foreigner can speak good Hindi.

For now, he hopes to transition from his older content to making more videos about himself and Singapore. With not many foreigners speaking Mandarin, he feels that his videos are in a niche market.

He said: "I'm just trying to go ahead and make content [so that] people can be introduced to Singapore, but from a different perspective."

zakaria@asiaone.com