When 38-year-old Chinese-Malaysian Gu Chian-peow arrived in China for the first time in 1999, he was excited to hear numerous people around him speak so naturally a language that his ancestors had fought so hard to pass down.

Fifteen years later, he has been able to impress and inspire millions of people in China, the homeland where his grandfather never had a chance to return, with a language he thought he had "just enough for daily use".

In the second season of Super Speaker, a popular public speech TV show aired on Beijing Satellite Channel, Gu won third place. He says he didn't expect to go that far, even though he made quite an impression with his debut show - passionately describing the hardships generations of Chinese immigrants in Malaysia had gone through to carry on the right to teach and speak Mandarin.