For many South Africans, Allan Pei has found a way to make Mandarin feel less foreign and more like something you might hear in an everyday conversation. 

Known online as Allan Sensei, the 29-year-old Chinese-South African content creator has built a fast-growing audience by doing something simple: teaching Chinese phrases through South African languages and familiar, everyday situations.

He speaks four languages – English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa and Mandarin – and includes the Shanghai dialect, or Shanghainese, as his fifth.

Born in South Africa to Chinese parents from Shanghai, Allan grew up with one foot in Cradock, a small town in the Eastern Cape province, and the other in a home shaped by Chinese language and tradition.

"Because my parents are immigrants, they're still very traditional Chinese. So, when they moved to South Africa, they didn't speak any English, they just spoke Chinese and had to learn how to communicate with the locals. Whereas for me, from a young age, I could pretty much just speak with everyone because of my environment," he recalled, chatting to CGTN via video call.

For Allan, ordinary childhood moments, like playing with other children, visiting their homes and going to parties, became his language classroom.

"I didn’t know it at the time that I was blending the cultures. When I’m out the house I have to speak a different language, think differently, and it’s so diverse. There were White kids, Colored kids, Black kids that I got to mix with, and then as soon as I got home, everything changed into Chinese. My homework was in English, but the family speaks Chinese," he said. "I kind of just saw myself as adapting to the two cultures and learning from both sides."

His ability to adapt, ask questions and keep connecting shaped the way Allan learnt languages. 

"Just because we don’t speak the same language doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend time with you,” he said. “It kind of starts to build up where I connect with you and learn these languages."

Years later, those everyday experiences became the heart of his online persona. Before content creation, Allan had studied law and worked in corporate and hospitality spaces. But there was always a pull to doing something online and he found his niche after being faced with the same real-life interactions: people asking where he was from and how he learnt languages.

He decided to create something relatable, South African content but something that also spoke to his Chinese heritage. The idea grew from the constant questions he'd receive around language. "Can you teach me Chinese? How do you say this in Chinese?" So, he blended both his worlds through content creation.

What surprised him most was not the attention, but what grew around it. "I didn’t expect that I’d be building such a positive community," he said.

For Allan, that community points to something bigger than social media. It speaks to the relationship between China and South Africa, and to the role language can play in deepening it.

"It acts as like a bridge between these two cultures," he said. "If you can communicate, right? You can start to build trust, you can start to ask questions and get answers."

Through his videos, he wants people to see beyond stereotypes and recognize shared humanity.

"The two cultures are actually worlds apart," he said, "but it actually is quite similar."

In fact, Allan’s videos have even reached a classroom in China after a fellow South African teaching in China reached out and requested to use one of his videos to provide his students with a brief but insightful isiXhosa lesson.

He tries to visit his family in Shanghai once a year, but is grateful to still experience his Chinese heritage at home, whether it’s through food or just in conversation with his folks.

Even after gaining an audience, Allan still sees himself as a learner. Chinese, he said, remains the hardest language because "of how aware you need to be tone changes" and "all of the technicalities." His advice to anyone trying to learn a new language is to practice with people, make mistakes and keep going. 

"Don’t be too hard on yourself," he said. "Enjoy the process."