Chinese road sweeper has brush with fame over passion for learning English on the job
Television footage shows street cleaner practising his language skills as he goes about his daily business
A Chinese street sweeper with a passion for learning English has demonstrated his unusual techniques for studying on the job.
A news programme on Heilongjiang Television on Friday showed Wang Shoushan, dressed in a sweeper’s jacket and a soldier’s cap, squatting on the roadside and writing English and Chinese translations on the pavement in the northeastern city of Harbin.
When asked by a reporter, Wang, 64, answered in a mixture of English and Mandarin that he had studied English for more than a decade but still felt he had only learned a “smattering … I am always a beginner”.
Originally from Zhejiang province in eastern China, Wang commutes more than one hour by bus to take an English course at a local college every Monday, according to the report.
In the course of his work he sometimes comes across discarded pieces of chalk which he uses to write on the pavements and at others he picks English exercise papers out of the bin to test himself.