Wow! You guys are definitely on the right track. I am impressed and excited. If you could give us the vocabulary words that were flashed on the screen by putting them in this blog that would be very helpful. Please give us some more video
That was so fun to watch, and I love the way the vocab is presented visual/oral together. The visual component reinforces the vocab for me. I also appreciated the cultural aspect: who knew ‘wok’ wasn’t accurate? Looking forward to more of these snippets…
Of course, as with many Chinese words that make it into English, wok is a Cantonese word — traditional 鑊 (23 strokes) and simplified 镬. Mandarin pronunciation is huo4.
As mentioned in the video, Mandarin uses a different character guo (锅) for “wok”.
When you say one beer, are you referring to one glass or one barrel?
How about showing some street names in future videos? When I was in Shanghai, a classmate of a friend of mine showed me around. He was a tone police. For the Chinese characters I didn’t recognize, I read the pinyin out loud. But since tone marks were absent from the street names (e.g., http://www.flickr.com/photos/h.....161079258/), I went monotone on my Shanghai guide and he made sure to correct me!
Next time it rains, please do a video of people going to work. It rained on my last day in Shanghai and I saw people in raincoats riding their bikes to work! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/honuhaigui/163951895/in/set-72157594161079258/)
Nice CCTV-style vid, fly on the wall or cockroach on the counter look at the cooking. What’s the Chinese for food poisoning and you guys being American, do you get excited about making sure there is no MSG used in the cooking? How do you ask that?
Ed
Art Kho,
Thanks for the wonderful slide show of Shanghai! I am very impressed. Shanghai looks like a very clean and well ordered city. Not like I remember from the pictures in my fourth grade geography book. I did not see one speck of litter and there was no sign of graffiti in all of your photographs. The pictures made me feel like Rip VanWinkle. Where have I been for the last twenty years…sleeping?
You are very welcome. Perish the Rip Van Winkle thoughts and grab the next flight to Shanghai! And then fly to Xiamen, another very clean city. I’m biased toward the latter because my late grandmother was from there.
As for the MSG, I guess you could ask something like 请别放味精 qǐng bié fàng wèijīng, but the people at the restaurant will look at you like you just went to a Texas BBQ and ask for the vegetarian platter, and you’ll get MSG anyway, so it’s not the most useful phrase in the world to learn.
hey John,
Thanks for that and the cultural note. Guess MSG is unavoidable, oh well we all gotta die of something!
Aric and John,
The two videos so far are peculiar in that there is no close up of a Chinese person - no speaking. Maybe it is in the run up to Halloween that the videos seems to be ghost-like, staying in the background and not interacting with the real world. Is this deliberate? Maybe in an Art-house movie kind of way you are trying to capture the isolation and alienation of the westerner in China - there but not there.
That’s just my sixth sense worth!
Ed
I wouldn’t say the videos are an attempt art-house, but in fact, you’re not that far off. For me, there are two important issues:
1. We have to be different. This stuff is instructional. But acting out dialogs can get really boring, really fast if you’re not careful. I wanted to have time to start with the video content, and reflect on it before creating the learning content, rather than scripting a dialog and having some amateur actors act them out. This was one way of doing that.
2. I beleive there is real creative mileage in blending the podcasting approach with the simple video. Just following people around and waiting for them to say something just doesn’t appeal much to me.
The thing i’ve learned from these couple of experiments is that we need to be more creative, and avoid doing the obvious. There are lots more idea on the way.
Ken, you wrote about being creative and avoiding the obvious. I think the thing that I liked the best about Aric and John’s video is that it seemed spontaneous, short, interesting, and instructive. It contained a nice tidbit about the wok…ooops, I mean the “guo” and it put supplemental vocabulary right on the screen. You could do the same thing with little street scenes like someone changing a tire or filling up their car with gas, or checking out at a supermarket. I got a bang out of one of maxiwawa’s videos where he just walked around his apartment explaining things like the bathtub tap being called the “head of the dragon”. Just follow the “Keep it Simple” principal and I think you will have a winner. They will be easy to produce and very well accepted. There are those of us out here in Chinese Neverland who are starving for this type of thing. That’s what sends us out on web seaching forages to find real life Chinese experience videos because for some of us the short vido clips and glimpses into Chinese daily life may in fact be as close as we will ever get to China.
This was awesome! If I may, I’d like to suggest that you also deliver this through the iTunes music store. This would be a great downloadable addition to my daily lessons, and I’ve got one of those spiffy iPods that’s capable of playing video. How awesome would it be if I had a whole library of short video lessons to take with me in addition to your regular content?
Ken,
Well I see the point, making the video little more than a ‘moving photograph’ keeps the attention on what is being taught. It is easier on the eye than darting around with a shaky camera, with text overlaid reading “this is a bus” “this is a car” in Chinese.
The acting thing is a bit too cliched alright and people aren’t crying out for it, so why go to the expense.
I look forward to more of these experiments meshing video with the podcasting vibe where the boast of “coming to you from Shanghai China” can be even more appreciated.
Ed
DARN POT - I’m embarrassed to say this, but I guess my ‘mentalese’ of Chinese ‘pot’ has been wrong for many months now. I had thought ‘guo’ 锅 meant ‘pot’ as in a big round pot, sorta like the kind you would boil water and cook spagetti in. After seeing the video and the ‘wok’ right in front of me when ‘guo’ popped up, I was like ‘ohhh, duh’, now it makes sense passing all those street-cookeries with the ‘火锅’ signs.
It’s kinda like when I was a kid, I don’t think it was until my teenage years that one day it dawned on me that ‘wall-to-wall’ carpeting didn’t mean carpets on the wall.
After I read your comment,I saw that John and Aric’s video above, then I just realized 锅 means wok! I also thought guo means pot which I use for pasta as you had thought.
我的天哪！
Wow! You guys are definitely on the right track. I am impressed and excited. If you could give us the vocabulary words that were flashed on the screen by putting them in this blog that would be very helpful. Please give us some more video
Bob.
Cargo una cerveza por palabra de vocabulario:
锅 guō
炒菜 chǎo cài
蕃茄炒蛋 fānqié chǎodàn
洗 xǐ
Enrique
That was so fun to watch, and I love the way the vocab is presented visual/oral together. The visual component reinforces the vocab for me. I also appreciated the cultural aspect: who knew ‘wok’ wasn’t accurate? Looking forward to more of these snippets…
hey am liking the new race for video supremacy at CP. so if there are emmys for TV what will the award at CP be, a jenny or a kenny?
Nice vid.
Of course, as with many Chinese words that make it into English, wok is a Cantonese word — traditional 鑊 (23 strokes) and simplified 镬. Mandarin pronunciation is huo4.
As mentioned in the video, Mandarin uses a different character guo (锅) for “wok”.
Enrique,
When you say one beer, are you referring to one glass or one barrel?
How about showing some street names in future videos? When I was in Shanghai, a classmate of a friend of mine showed me around. He was a tone police. For the Chinese characters I didn’t recognize, I read the pinyin out loud. But since tone marks were absent from the street names (e.g., http://www.flickr.com/photos/h.....161079258/), I went monotone on my Shanghai guide and he made sure to correct me!
Next time it rains, please do a video of people going to work. It rained on my last day in Shanghai and I saw people in raincoats riding their bikes to work! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/honuhaigui/163951895/in/set-72157594161079258/)
Nice CCTV-style vid, fly on the wall or cockroach on the counter look at the cooking. What’s the Chinese for food poisoning and you guys being American, do you get excited about making sure there is no MSG used in the cooking? How do you ask that?
Ed
Art Kho,
Thanks for the wonderful slide show of Shanghai! I am very impressed. Shanghai looks like a very clean and well ordered city. Not like I remember from the pictures in my fourth grade geography book. I did not see one speck of litter and there was no sign of graffiti in all of your photographs. The pictures made me feel like Rip VanWinkle. Where have I been for the last twenty years…sleeping?
Bob,
You are very welcome. Perish the Rip Van Winkle thoughts and grab the next flight to Shanghai! And then fly to Xiamen, another very clean city. I’m biased toward the latter because my late grandmother was from there.
Art
Very nice. “Let’s go eat.”
Ed,
Food poisoning is 食物中毒 shíwù zhòngdú.
As for the MSG, I guess you could ask something like 请别放味精 qǐng bié fàng wèijīng, but the people at the restaurant will look at you like you just went to a Texas BBQ and ask for the vegetarian platter, and you’ll get MSG anyway, so it’s not the most useful phrase in the world to learn.
Guys - am glad you all dig.
We took LOADS of video, but would really like to know what you all would like.
Get ‘em in quick, so we can get started!
Aric
hey John,
Thanks for that and the cultural note. Guess MSG is unavoidable, oh well we all gotta die of something!
Aric and John,
The two videos so far are peculiar in that there is no close up of a Chinese person - no speaking. Maybe it is in the run up to Halloween that the videos seems to be ghost-like, staying in the background and not interacting with the real world. Is this deliberate? Maybe in an Art-house movie kind of way you are trying to capture the isolation and alienation of the westerner in China - there but not there.
That’s just my sixth sense worth!
Ed
Ed,
I wouldn’t say the videos are an attempt art-house, but in fact, you’re not that far off. For me, there are two important issues:
1. We have to be different. This stuff is instructional. But acting out dialogs can get really boring, really fast if you’re not careful. I wanted to have time to start with the video content, and reflect on it before creating the learning content, rather than scripting a dialog and having some amateur actors act them out. This was one way of doing that.
2. I beleive there is real creative mileage in blending the podcasting approach with the simple video. Just following people around and waiting for them to say something just doesn’t appeal much to me.
The thing i’ve learned from these couple of experiments is that we need to be more creative, and avoid doing the obvious. There are lots more idea on the way.
Ken Carroll
You guys do great job on Chinese and its culture! Appreciate your efforts!!
Cooking delicious! Perfect!
Also, we invite you go there to our website to talk talk China..
http://www.tellchina.com/forum
Best Regards,
John
www.tellchina.com
Ken, you wrote about being creative and avoiding the obvious. I think the thing that I liked the best about Aric and John’s video is that it seemed spontaneous, short, interesting, and instructive. It contained a nice tidbit about the wok…ooops, I mean the “guo” and it put supplemental vocabulary right on the screen. You could do the same thing with little street scenes like someone changing a tire or filling up their car with gas, or checking out at a supermarket. I got a bang out of one of maxiwawa’s videos where he just walked around his apartment explaining things like the bathtub tap being called the “head of the dragon”. Just follow the “Keep it Simple” principal and I think you will have a winner. They will be easy to produce and very well accepted. There are those of us out here in Chinese Neverland who are starving for this type of thing. That’s what sends us out on web seaching forages to find real life Chinese experience videos because for some of us the short vido clips and glimpses into Chinese daily life may in fact be as close as we will ever get to China.
This was awesome! If I may, I’d like to suggest that you also deliver this through the iTunes music store. This would be a great downloadable addition to my daily lessons, and I’ve got one of those spiffy iPods that’s capable of playing video. How awesome would it be if I had a whole library of short video lessons to take with me in addition to your regular content?
Answer: Too awesome.
Aric,
How about taking some clips from the stuff you do on GigShanghai and teach us the Chinese words for musical instruments, the props, the bar, etc.?
Art
Ken,
Well I see the point, making the video little more than a ‘moving photograph’ keeps the attention on what is being taught. It is easier on the eye than darting around with a shaky camera, with text overlaid reading “this is a bus” “this is a car” in Chinese.
The acting thing is a bit too cliched alright and people aren’t crying out for it, so why go to the expense.
I look forward to more of these experiments meshing video with the podcasting vibe where the boast of “coming to you from Shanghai China” can be even more appreciated.
Ed
DARN POT - I’m embarrassed to say this, but I guess my ‘mentalese’ of Chinese ‘pot’ has been wrong for many months now. I had thought ‘guo’ 锅 meant ‘pot’ as in a big round pot, sorta like the kind you would boil water and cook spagetti in. After seeing the video and the ‘wok’ right in front of me when ‘guo’ popped up, I was like ‘ohhh, duh’, now it makes sense passing all those street-cookeries with the ‘火锅’ signs.
It’s kinda like when I was a kid, I don’t think it was until my teenage years that one day it dawned on me that ‘wall-to-wall’ carpeting didn’t mean carpets on the wall.
Nice vid.
Lantian,
After I read your comment,I saw that John and Aric’s video above, then I just realized 锅 means wok! I also thought guo means pot which I use for pasta as you had thought.
我的天哪！