China has undergone fundamental changes during the past 20 years and it is really difficult to sum up its achievements in simple language, Dashan, one of China's most famous foreigners, told Xinhua recently.

"It is easy to talk about unchanged things in China, because there are few of them. But it is really hard to list China's changes, because there are so many," Dashan, a Canadian national who has become a bona fide celebrity in China, said during a recent interview in Toronto.

"For the past 24 years, I have been closely tied with China. My life has been changing along with China, as have the programs that I perform as well as all the other things I do," said Dashan, whose legendary ability to speak the Chinese language has made him one of the best comedians in China.

Born Mark Henry Rowswell in Ottawa, Dashan began studying Chinese while attending the University of Toronto in 1984. Upon graduation in 1988, he was awarded a full scholarship to continue Chinese language studies at Peking University, where he was to begin his infatuation with Chinese performing arts and his future career as a freelance performer in China.

In December 1988, Dashan was invited to perform a comedy skit for the China Central Television (CCTV) New Year's Gala, a variety program broadcast to a countrywide audience to celebrate Spring Festival. The performance propelled him to national stardom overnight and earned him the Chinese name "Dashan" ("big mountain" in Chinese), the name of the character he played in the skit.

To Dashan, one of the most obvious changes in China lies in its way of communicating with the outside world, which has become increasingly smooth. While his first trip to China in 1988 lasted days and involved two connecting flights and a train journey from Hong Kong to Beijing, now it takes a mere 13 hours to fly non-stop from Toronto to Beijing, said Dashan, who travels frequently between the two sides of the Pacific.