Unaccustomed I am at giving speeches ....

I occasionally appear as a guest on a national television show called Today's Movies and TV. The producer usually partners me with a beautiful lady and we chat about the latest releases, a la Roger Ebert.

When Tian Huiqun came on the show, I was awe-struck. Here was an elegant young lady who would expound a movie in such an intelligent and articulate way that, had I not been sitting next to her, I'd have believed she was reading from a prompter.

Actually, if had I read a text myself have written, I wouldn't be so fluent. Then, I have never been known for my loquacity. The first time I hosted a forum at Shanghai Film Festival, with Ang Lee and Feng Xiaogang among the guests, I did such an awful job that I became the butt of jokes in the press coverage. Now you understand why I envy oratory skill.

Many people who are good writers are lousy speakers. Someone told me Han Han yes, the charismatic and combative author with a huge legion of adoring fans stutters when he talks. That's why he rarely makes television appearances.

I'm not vouching truthfulness here, but it certainly makes me feel better about myself. (I'm sure one of his fans is going to assassinate me next week. So, please don't translate this column into Chinese.)

The Chinese language does not leave much room for afterthought. It normally places adjectives and adverbs before the words they modify. That means I have to come up with a complete sentence before uttering it. I would be a better speaker in English, if I get the chance. I can always resort to what Diderot called "staircase wit" by adding the flourish after the basic framework of a sentence is blurted out.

Then I found out I'm not an out-and-out geek who channels all his yackety-yak into written words. I can carry on a speech or conversation under certain circumstances, for example, in front of some people and in a select group, or when I was 20. I can't explain why. There must be some psychological reason to it.

I've known people who suffer the opposite disorder: Their degree of volubility increases with the size of the audience. A regular classroom? Regular delivery. A stadium-sized audience? He would be on cloud nine.

A friend of mine in San Francisco used to host large meetings in public places. She would control the crowd as if flipping over her palm, as the Chinese would say. But such functions don't happen often. So, she got a talk show on local TV, but she can hardly manage three guests. Like most media celebrities in the ethnic community, she has a day job.

"You don't need to sell life insurance," I advised her. "You need to start your own religion."

Back to Tian Huiqun and the movie talk show. She is a colleague of Yu Dan, whose television lectures of Confucian wisdom made her one of the wealthiest scholars in the nation. I told Tian's husband: "Don't you know you have got a goldmine at home? Get her a good show laugh your way to the bank."

(China Daily 04/20/2007 page20)