Sharks’ new MC a multilingual voice of passion
Print Edition
HAVING lived in Shanghai for six years and being married to a local woman, Englishman Jayme Lawman, better known for his Chinese name Luo Sijie, has made a name for himself among local basketball fans as the MC for the Shanghai Sharks, the local entry in the China Basketball Association.
Lawman, 25, speaks perfect Mandarin and Shanghai dialect — part of the reason he got the job to exhort the crowd to cheer for the home team. But he says originally the Sharks offered the job to one of his friends, but the man didn’t speak Mandarin, so he passed the opportunity to him.
“I had the experience of holding events such as pool parties,” says Lawman, “so I know a thing or two about stirring the atmosphere up, and I think the result was satisfactory.”
Lawman appears for home games at the Yuanshen Sports Center Stadium in Pudong, encouraging spectators to cheer up for their team.
“It seems that Shanghai people are quite shy and reserved,” says Lawman. “I saw the atmosphere in Xinjiang, Guangzhou and Beijing, and I find people there put in more passion. I want to change that.”
Lawman says most British love soccer, rugby and cricket, but he finds them all boring. For a long time, he wasn’t interested in sports at all. Then he visited the United States and played basketball and fell in love with the game immediately.
“After going back to England, I went to a sports school studying basketball,” he says. “We studied theories and coaching skills, which became the base of my current job.”
Lawman says he first visited Shanghai in 2005 and was amazed by the city. A native of Northampton, England, he had never seen a metropolis like Shanghai before. So after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, he decided to come to Shanghai again.
“At that time I just graduated from the sports school and wasn’t quite sure what my next step was,” he says. “And then one of my friends suggested I come to China to carve a niche and I thought ‘Why not’?”
Lawman is now coach of the senior high school basketball team at the Shanghai High School International Division.
The team has nine 10th- and 11th-grade students and is doing very well in a league that Lawman organized this year.
“We were in a very awkward situation before the league was organized, as we couldn’t apply to either league for international schools or for Chinese schools,” says Lawman. “So I organized our own, attracting five other schools in Shanghai to participate.”
Lawman is a fair-minded coach who is willing to give the boot to let talented players go if they fail to demonstrate team spirit. He says he once had three grade-12 students on the team who were hree very talented players but due to attitude and work-ethic related problems, were let go from the team.
Back in 2008 when Lawman returned to Shanghai for the second time, he entered the Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) with a major in international trade. He lacked interest in the coursework but he loved Mandarin, especially traditional Chinese characters.
“After I learned about the history of Chinese characters, I decided to use traditional Chinese,” he says. “At SISU, one of the lecturers was a fan of traditional Chinese characters. At his lectures, when he taught a character, he would write both simplified and traditional versions on the blackboard. The traditional version was just for me.”
Lawman says he is good at imitating — clearly an advantage in learning a language. He acquired Mandarin very quickly, but just when he thought he had no problems living in China, he was pushed out of his comfort zone.
“It was the first time my girlfriend, who is Shanghainese, invited me to her family dinner,” recalls Lawman. “Her parents talked a lot, but I understood nothing.”
They spoke Shanghai dialect, which sounds completely different from Mandarin. Lawman started to learn the dialect. He went onto the street to listen to what people said and tried to talk as much as possible. Once again, his talent of imitation helped him. Very soon he spoke fluently in Shanghainese as well.
Two years ago, Lawman married his fiancée. Like every expat in Shanghai, he experienced some culture shock but got used to family life in China before long.
“The only thing that is not so satisfactory here is the Internet,” he says. “We cannot get access to almost all the popular foreign websites like YouTube and Facebook, and the Internet is really, really slow.”
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