Mark Zuckerberg Puts the Rest of Us to Shame by Speaking Fluent Chinese
— -- How do you say "wow" in Chinese?
If you ever need shaming into keeping up with a New Years' resolution, look no further than the example set by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
While many spend hours each day scrolling through Facebook, the 30-year-old billionaire has been busy running his company and learning Mandarin, something he chose as his "personal challenge" in 2010.
Zuckerberg impressed the crowd at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Wednesday when he participated in a 30-minute question-and-answer session entirely in Chinese.
He later posted his Chinese-speaking debut to his Facebook page, drawing raves from some of his 30 million Facebook followers.
"Wow, just wow," one commenter wrote. "Speaking Chinese for an entire Q&A is already beyond mind-blowing. But then cracking jokes in Chinese and getting the whole room to erupt in laughter?? That's seriously taking it to a whole new level!"
While this may be the most public showing of the payoff of his famous personal challenges, Zuckerberg has previously tasked himself with other ambitious goals.
In 2009, he gave his trademark hoodie a break and vowed to wear a tie every day to work.
In 2011, he announced on his Facebook page that "I just killed a pig and a goat," keeping with his goal to only eat meat from animals he personally slaughtered.
Zuckerberg said at the time he would appreciate his food more if he learned the process of killing the animal and cooking it.
In 2012, Zuckerberg set a goal to return to coding -- something he hadn't had a chance to have much involvement in as he grew the business of Facebook.
The next year, Zuckerberg made it a point to meet someone new outside Facebook every day -- something he said in interviews turned out to be easier than he expected.
This year, the tech titan has been busy practicing gratitude. He told Business Week his goal for 2014 has been to write on thank you note every day.
Not too shabby for a guy who runs a multi-billion dollar company with more than 1.3 billion daily users.
