Anming (Oriental Pearl)

Anming is a popular polyglot YouTuber.

She has 1M subscribers on her YouTube channel, ‘Oriental Pearl.’

Introduction-

Alyssa Studebaker hails from Ferndale, Michigan, United States.

Anming is her Chinese name.

She has a predominant German ancestry and a minor Ukrainian ancestry.

Struggling with Spanish-

Even though Anming currently knows Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as a teen, she struggled with learning Spanish.

Even after learning Spanish in high school for around five years, she couldn’t converse in Spanish.

This happened because Anming didn’t learn the language from a native Spanish speaker and believed that she could learn Spanish by just attending Spanish classes in school.

Education & career-

In August 2008, Anming joined Northwood University in Michigan to study for a BBA in Advertising.

She graduated in May 2012 and was the student of the year and also received the Turner Award.

From September 2013 to August 2014, Anming worked as a Marketing Specialist at CoreTech System Co., Ltd. (Moldex3D) in the United States and Taiwan.

In September 2017, she joined Fudan University in Shanghai, China to study for a master’s degree in international relations and affairs, fully in Chinese.

In September 2019, Anming joined Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan through a student exchange program for Asian Pacific Studies.

She completed her master’s degree in June 2021 from Fudan University.

Since October 2021, Anming has been working as a Public Relations Coordinator at Marriott International in Tokyo, Japan.

Her job sponsors her visa.

Love for China & languages-

While studying in Northwood University in Michigan, Anming got interested in China, thanks to her Chinese boyfriend.

So, after graduating, she went to Xi’an and here, she worked as a volunteer elementary school teacher for a month.

Later, while in China, Anming started learning Chinese.

She learnt Chinese by attending a language school, hiring a private tutor, doing language exchange and studying at home.

For around three months, Anming used to learn Chinese hardcore and then, she used to take break of three months and study the language casually and then, continue studying hardcore, she repeated this process for three years to learn Chinese.

Later, she followed these same methods to learn Japanese.

Anming started learning Japanese by the Pimsleur method and thanks to the Kanji, she was able to easily learn Japanese from Chinese.

Japanesepod101.com also helped her in learning the language.

Oriental Pearl & her inspiration-

Anming started her YouTube channel, ‘Oriental Pearl‘ on 25 April 2019.

At the time of starting her channel, she was living in Shanghai and wanted to focus her channel on China and so, she named her YouTube channel as Oriental Pearl after the Oriental Pearl Tower of Shanghai.

But later as Anming started travelling to other countries especially to Japan, she diversified the content of her YouTube channel.

Benjamin Rich of the bald and bankrupt YouTube channel has been one of her favourite YouTubers and his style of interviewing people in his YouTube videos inspired her to start her own YouTube channel.

Love for Japan & Japanese-

After passing HSK 6 in Chinese and becoming fluent in the language, Anming started learning Japanese in China.

She was interested in learning Japanese because she found similarities between Japan and China.

Then, Anming lived for a year in Japan and loved the country and then moved back to live in China.

Studying in Japan & China-

In 2016, Anming applied to study from Fudan University but as she didn’t get any response from the university, she got fed up and moved to Japan in 2017.

She enrolled into a Japanese language school to study Japanese from intermediate to advanced level and also secured a job in Japan.

At that time, Anming received news that she has been accepted into Fudan University in China and as she was living in Japan at the time, she delayed enrolment into the university by a year.

After studying Japanese for a year in a Japanese language school in Tokyo and teaching English on the side, in 2017, she moved back to China to study from Fudan University.

Then, in 2019, Anming again moved to Japan to study from Waseda University as a graduate student exchange.

And later, she started working in Japan.

A successful YouTuber-

As of January 2024, she has 1M subscribers on ‘Oriental Pearl’ YouTube channel and 247K followers on Instagram.

Anming earns from advertisements on her YouTube videos, affiliate marketing and she also accepts donations on Patreon.

She is a part-time YouTuber.

Personal life-

At the end of 2020, Anming met Tommy on the HelloTalk app.

He was her language exchange partner and after meeting him in person in Shinjuku, she was impressed by his confidence and later, they fell in love.

Tommy is a Japanese salaryman.

They got married on 21 May 2022 in Japan.

Anming is a catholic and has been a member of the Catholic Church.

She lives in Tokyo and is tall at 5’6.

Some interesting facts about Anming-

• In addition to China and Japan, Anming also travelled to Vietnam, Ireland and Hong Kong.
• As a child she was shy and introverted but later, learning several languages made her an extrovert.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Anming?

Share with me in the comment section below.

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