We are often asked how our children came to speak Chinese well. Besides sending them to Chinese school part time for a couple years, my husband also picked out Chinese serial dramas with appropriate content and good dialogue for them to watch. They would turn on the subtitles so they could see the characters, too.
For older children and adults, look for TV series featuring an actor by the name of 李保田 in period dramas. He is a well-read man who speaks slowly and carefully. There’s a series about a judge, 包青天, and a comedy series about a cook,厨子当官 (season 1)
For small children:
西游记 (Journey to the West, cartoon version) The adventures of a monk who was sent to the West to get the Scriptures, accompanied by the monkey king, a dragon horse, and a pig character.
地道战 Tunnel Warfare. An old movie about how villagers outsmarted the Japanese invaders by digging a tunnel system under their village.
阿凡提 – folk stories from XinJiang. The wise fool who is always outsmarting the crooks.
For girls:
还珠格格 – a silly princess. By watching her receive her in-palace education, your child learns a lot, too! — but my daughter cautions that it has scary parts.
大长今- a series about a cook in the Korean imperial palace, seeking to restore honor to her mother’s name. This is the series that started the Korean-clothes fad in China a few years ago. She gets into some sticky-intrigue situations, and always makes the morally-right choice.
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