Best Chinese TV series for learning?

I think 浪漫满屋 (korean series dubbed into chinese) is very good, not because of a good plot or anything, but rather because language is really simple, the context gives lots of clues, and the actors speak clearly.  Just what you'd expect in terms of sappy predictable mainstream romantic comedy crap.  Note buying this dvd you'll probably get traditional charecters.

李小龙传奇is a 50 part CCTV series on bruce lee, good for the same reasons.  Very clear speaking, simplified charecters.  A bit too much violence for my tastes, but good.

If you like fantasy type setting, 牛郎织女 is a great CCTV series, and about one of China's most famous old stories.  Also, very simple language (except the 5% of the show when the immortals in heaven start talking to each other exclusivly in chengyu, but hey, its a very small part)  Simplified subtitles.

I wouldn't go for english subtitles - go for charecters.  That way you can use them to understand words you missed in the sentence, and can even pause and look things up.  English translations often bear a very strained relationship with the original dialogue - may make it easier to have fun watching, but will probably hurt your language learning.

I'd suggest buying them on http://www.amazon.cn/ - that way you avoid the risks, and moral cost, of pirating.  Figure you'll probably spend 5-10 dollars US, including shipping, on each series - pretty cheap by Western Standards.  And the show's producers deserve to make some profit, after all you are getting the benefit of their work.

I have watched some chinese movies and the speed at which they speak is so fast and really hard to follow along even when there are subtitles, I know its going to take alot of time (forever, maybe) to get a feel for the language but I will keep learning as much as I can.  I listen to the lessons here on Cpod   hoping to develope better listening ability. Thanks for the suggestions of chinese shows to watch, I'll check them out.

谢谢，humraymond!

钻石王老五的艰难爱情 is one that I'd recommend if you're into absurdly melodramatic TV series.  It's like watching Days of Our Lives, with all of its riculousness, but in Mandarin of course.

You can find it with English subtitles here:

www.viikii.net/channels/goto/RichManPoorLove

moloch,

yes, i also saw and enjoyed 别了，温哥华 a bit on tv a while back, and completely concur with your assessment of the native english speakers' acting ability. actually, the funniest thing i noticed is that they react or emote to correspond with what is being said in mandarin, even though they ostensibly would not understand what is being said! well, maybe that was at the director's behest.

anyways, thanks for the tip on 北京人在纽约

北京人在纽约 (beijing ren zai niuyue) is pretty good.. filmed in New York City..

Another good series is 别了，温哥华 biele wengehua, filmed in Vancouver... but you will be horrified at the acting abilties of the native english speakers in this series.. 99.9% is mandarin though.

Well, I went down to my local Asian mall for dinner tonight, and found a video store. They had Winter Sonata ("Winter Love Song") dubbed in Mandarin with English subtitles, yay! :) And at a much lower price than online, too. So I'm a happy newbie...

Well, turns out the Amazon downloads are in Korean with English subtitles. So much for that. I did have someone direct me to this website, and it *looks* like their DVDs might be dubbed in Mandarin.

http://tinyurl.com/33eek5

I found Winter Sonata available via Amazon for $1.99 per episode, but it doesn't say what language it's in or if it's dubbed. I imagine it's prob in Korean with no dubbing or subtitles. I'm tempted to get the first episode to find out. It's at:

http://tinyurl.com/245egz

Rich - thanks so much! I'll give it a shot tomorrow. :)

(I was able to find some Winter Sonata on YouTube, but the episodes are all broken up into several pieces and some pieces are missing. Blech. Of course, now I want to see it all...)

Yeah, wish I could find Winter Sonata dubbed in Chinese on the 'net, but can't. Only in China I guess.

user3881,

I am using IE7. And even if you have "Show Hidden Files and Folders" on in your Tools-FolderOptions->View panel, you won't be able to see the "Contents.IE5" directory in your user profile's "Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files" directory. And yeah, even when you get into Contents.IE5 by manually typing it in the Address bar, you get a bunch of gibberish directories that IE uses to hash the cache. So that is why I recommend doing a "Search" in there for "flv" files.

Oh, right, you can't move it if still in the player. Close your browser... if I remember correctly not even closing the page does the trick... you have to completely exit out of IE (so what I do is load a bunch of the videos, then close IE and copy over all the FLV files). For some reason YouTube's player doesn't put a lock on it, but this player for JiaYouErNv does.

And the stream capture program I have can't seem to get it, either. :(

Winter Sonata looks interesting, but I'd rather see it in Mandarin.

Ah! I was able to find the file!

But it won't let me copy or cut it to put it in a different directory.

Ooof. Well, I have IE7 rather than IE5, but I was able to drill down to where my IE keeps the files, I believe. I found it in the options are of the IE pulldowns. Anyhow, I was unable to find any .flv files in the directory. :(

oops... I stupidly used < and > symbles to put a variable in the path to the IE cache, and see that it disappeared. For step 2 it should be:

2) When it is finished loading, using a Window's file browser (i.e. "My Computer") change to this directory on your computer:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\

(replace <your user name> with the name you use to log into your computer, e.g. "Rich")

Okay, for getting these videos on your computer (which actually happens when you click the episode you want to watch and it starts loading in the player) to watch OFFLINE (so you don't have to watch grass grow each time you go back to watch it), here is what you have to do: 1) First, using Internet Explorer (recommended for thsi to work as Firefox caches it differenly) load the episode you want in the player as if you were going to watch it online (pause the and go do something else while it loads) 2) When it is finished loading, using a Window's file browser (i.e. "My Computer") change to this directory on your computer: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\ (replace with the name you use to log into your computer, e.g. "Rich") 3) Click the "Search" button at the top of the window (assuming you are using XP, or just type step 4 in to the search box at the top of the window for Vista) and click "All files and folders". You should see "Context.IE5" in the "Look In:" field. 4) Type *.flv in the file name field. Press enter. Now it should show you the file it saved for the episode you played, something jibberish like 11715023879an29[1].flv 5) Right click the file, select CUT, go to the directory you want to store your 家有儿女 videos, right click "Paste" and then rename the file to something like "episode1.flv" 6) Now you have an FLV file. Now what? You need an FLV viewer (Youtube files are the same type too), so go to http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/flv-player/, download and install. Now just double click on the FLV file you put in the directory and it should play. I get all this formation from a website that tells you how to view YouTube files often. The HOWTO site is: http://www.walkernews.net/2007/05/08/how-to-save-youtube- -for-offline-playback

I'm with user3881 - I went to the site, but from what I could find, didn't see anything that looked like a download button (based on the links when I hover over each one, since I can't read much Chinese yet). I also tried right-clicking the video, but everything showed as a question mark, and none of the available options started a download. It looks like a great site tho! Any advice as to what specifically to do to download them? Thanks!

Mark, you said: "The link I gave is to an index page for all the episodes. After it finishes loading, you can click on the image for one episode that while load a page that contains a video object that plays the episode. I think you can right click and save from there, if you want."

Unfortunately, that doesn't work. I'd really like to be able to download the episodes and watch them on my computer rather than watch them streaming. Also unfortunately, I can't yet read written Chinese, so all the characters on the screen are frustrating as I have no idea which one might (if any of them do) say "download"...

More advise?

Started actually watching 家有儿女 today, watching the whole episode instead of just flipping around. Found the script to the first episode here on a Korean site: http://k.daum.net/qna/view.html?qid=3H3A7 That helped me understand the first one a bit, to get their names and such down.

hi user 18844,

haha, i too had problems with my 新上海滩 DVDs, purchased in the u.s. ... i got to disc 3 of 6 and it contained episodes of "dragonball z" in japanese. fortunately i was able to take it back to the video store and they gladly exchanged it. but our shared experience does make me wonder if there are any legit copies in existence!

and thanks for the csi tip.

The link I gave is to an index page for all the episodes. After it finishes loading, you can click on the image for one episode that while load a page that contains a video object that plays the episode. I think you can right click and save from there, if you want.

Hey - thanks for the great info! This may sound like a dumb question, but how do I download the episodes of 家有儿女 from the link give in Mark's post? I went there, but couldn't figure it out. Thanks!

I also bought the 新上海滩 series on compressed dvd a while ago. I got a little ways into it but somehow my dvd player would mess up. That was the end of that. Recently I've been watching the Chinese version of CSI: 案发现场. The language in it is not easy (lots of scientific/formal speech) but I enjoy it because it's not as annoying as other Chinese TV series.

thanks, chittywang(cubed) and everyone else!

Cool, thanks for the link Mark. As for Winter Sonata, of course it being Korean on the Internet not able to find it dubbed in Chinese like you can find in China, but if you are interested, Youtube has it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=20MPRFW9LDY

http://zt.ku6.com/2006/jiayouernv/

You don't need a DVD, just patience to download.

do you have any idea where we can order this DVD from?

It's not Chinese, but Korean, but as I said in another thread, I found Winter Sonata ("Gyeoul yeonga" in Korean, or 冬季恋歌 in Chinese), a 20 hour TV series that between 2004 and 2005 saw played on CCTV 3 times. The first time I saw it, I couldn't seep at 3am in the morning and turned the TV on to see if the 2-3 night time channels had anything. Winter Sonata was playing, and even though I had just started studying Chinese full time, I realized I could understand them! It was drama, with lots of emotions so you could easily figure out what they were saying. Worth getting at a DVD store in China if you can. Mine is has a audio track for both Chinese and Original Korean with Chinese subtitles, about 5 discs if I remember right.

up~~~up~~!

Oh!

I forgot to mention its intensily annoying!

BULLSEYE！！！

家有儿女 on DVD

There is a series called 家有儿女 which shared amongst all the Chinese TV channels in shanghai, is more or less on 24/7.

I guess 家有儿女, is meant to sound like 加油儿女

Anyway, they talk in day to day language and so its easier to understand than those many ancient Chinese 电视剧。Its very Beijingy so if you like your 儿's its especially good.

next job: find it on dvd!