Al Rudaisat in Hangzhou in September 2022, introducing the Arab nations set to attend the Asian Games next month. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Deciding to improve his Chinese skills further and deepen his knowledge of Chinese culture, he joined the Kailehui Cross-talk Club in 2018. Al Rudaisat often practiced pronouncing vocabulary, short phrases and sentences before sending recordings to his Chinese partners and teachers to seek corrections and ideas for improvements, even very late at night.

"It was initially quite strange, and even kind of scary, waking up to five of Musab's voice messages at 3 am," Liu Zhendong, 36, Al Rudaisat's cross-talk partner, says, recalling the first few months after welcoming him into the cross-talk club.

"Musab is among the most hardworking apprentices I've had, among about 200 students I've interacted with. He would practice the pronunciations until midnight, and I would receive his WeChat messages around 2 or 3 am asking me to rate and correct them," says his master and teacher, Bo Kaiwen, 35.

"When the other masters said 'Musab is legit', those three words were all I needed to hear," Al Rudaisat says, recalling the exact moment that solidified his passion for becoming a cross-talk comedian.

"Mr Bo allowed me to perform in front of other respected masters of xiangsheng to see if I have the capabilities to be an independent comedian; they simply said those three words and that incident alone boosted my confidence so much that I think I will never stop practicing xiangsheng," he says.

"Initially, he could speak Mandarin quite fluently, but he lacked an understanding of Chinese humor and could not understand some puns or references we were making," Bo says, adding that as Al Rudaisat's master, he was deeply impressed by the hardworking student when they first met in 2018.