Weathers moved to Shanghai in 2006 to teach business and English at Shanghai Normal University, and started a Website, American English Circle, for language and culture exchange.

At the same time he started answering adverts for foreign actors in Chinese commercials and dramas.

Having run an advertising company in the US, he had always wanted to get into the media. In China there were great opportunities for a reliable-looking foreigner in his 30s. Falling into the slightly older, professional-looking category Weathers has played engineers and experts for a range of products ranging from cars to food to household products.

Foreigner perspective

During the summer holidays of 2008, Weathers bought a small camera and started shooting "Foreigner Perspective." It was designed for Chinese to learn English and get an idea of a foreigner's perspective on China. It was also designed to show the real China to foreigners.

In accordance with his adventurous nature, the videos feature Weathers eating dog meat, bargaining at the fabric market and travelling to little known corners of China. Working on a low budget - as low as US$10 per finished minute - Weathers even trained his taxi driver to use the camera while on location in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.

"Mr Ling, the taxi driver was very excited, and he took me to the secret places only local people know. But when I gave him the tape he got embarrassed at his parts, and wanted to cut them out," says Weathers.

During his adventures in China there have been some memorable moments, such as the day he got lost hiking on a mountain in Henan Province and had to hitchhike down a dirt road. He later found himself on the back of a motorcycle-wagon with a Chinese woman and her two-day-old baby.

Then there were the simply ludicrous times such as when he was shooting a commercial and the director handed him a stack of papers to pretend to read as part of the plot. The papers turned out to be the budget for the commercial and Weathers found his agent had charged the client five times the amount he paid Weathers.

"I suspect agents all over the world are crooked," he says. "Many people got a piece of that pie."

There were also fun if exhausting experiences such as shooting film for 22 hours straight as a pirate for a well-known pizza company.

"I had to swing from one boat to another, land on the edge, jump down on the deck, draw my sword and lock blades with the other pirate.

"It was grueling but the end result was pretty cool - it looked like 'Pirates of the Caribbean.'"

Now he hopes to do more hosting for Chinese TV, as well as more directing of his own.