TV celebrity Mark Rowswell, also known as Dashan, is now focusing on his stand-up comedy performances. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Rowswell's move also comes from learning xiangsheng, or crosstalk, a traditional Chinese comic art form. He learned it from established Chinese performer Jiang Kun.

He has also picked up other traditional Chinese folk art forms, such as kuaiban, a form of storytelling accompanied by the performer making sounds with a set of small bamboo clappers.

"One of the fundamental differences between stand-up comedy and xiangsheng is that xiangsheng is a whole package with a beginning, a developing section and the end. Stand-up comedy is unstructured. It's loose and just goes from joke to joke," Rowswell tells China Daily.

"What I do is sort of halfway in between. It's basically a 60-minute autobiographical show and I tell my story of being a foreign student in Beijing, meeting Jiang Kun, starting to learn xiangsheng and becoming a celebrity."

Born and raised in Ottawa, he graduated with a degree in Chinese studies from the University of Toronto. In 1988, he received a full scholarship to learn Chinese in Beijing. At the time, he wanted to do business, educational or cultural programs. Becoming a performer was totally by accident, he says.